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SONIA :  BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 
STEPHEN  McKENNA 


SONIA 

BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 

BY 

STEPHEN  McKENNA 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE   H.   DORAN    COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,    1917, 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


College 
Library 

PR 


TO 
A  VERY  GALLANT  LADY 


"The  heart  of  the  wise  is  in  the 
house  of  mourning;  but  the  heart  of 
fools  is  in  the  house  of  mirth. '"' 

ECCLESIASTES   VII.  4 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES  .      .      .      .  11 

II.  THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    .      .      .      .  59 

III.  BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH 123 

IV.  SONIA  DAINTON 187 

V.  LORING 229 

VI.  THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL 292 

VII.  THE  FIVE  DAYS 325 

VIII.  DEAD  YESTERDAY 359 

IX.  THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN      .      .      .  395 

X.  AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON 420 

XL  WATCHING  FOR  THE  DAWN 442 

XII.  UNBORN  TO-MORROW  462 


vn 


SONIA:  BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


SONIA 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   STRANGER   WITHIN  OUR  GATES 

"I  called  my  men  from  my  trenches,  my  quarries,  my  wharves,  and 

my  shears, 

All  I  had  wrought  I  abandoned  to  the  faith  of  the  faithless  years. 
Only  I  cut  on  the  timber,  only  I  carved  on  the  stone: 
'After  me  cometh  a  Builder.    Tell  him,  I  too  have  known!' " 

RUDYARD  KIPLING,  "The  Palace." 

AT   the   age   of   three-and-twenty   Charles   Templeton, 
my  old  tutor  at  Oxford,  set  himself  to  write  a  history 
of  the'  Third   French   Republic.     When  I   made  his 
acquaintance  some  thirty  years  later  he  had  satisfactorily  con- 
cluded his  introductory  chapter  on  the  origin  of  Kingship.    At 
his  death,  three  months  ago,  I  understand  that  his  notes  on 
the  precursors  of  Charlemagne  were  almost  as  complete  as  he 
desired.     "It   is   so   difficult   to   know   where  to   start,   Mr. 
Oakleigh,"  he  used  to  say,  as  I  picked  my  steps  through  the 
litter  of  notebooks  that  cumbered  his  tables,  chairs  and  floor. 

Magnis  componere  parva.  I  am  sensible  of  a  like  difficulty 
in  attempting  to  sketch  for  the  benefit  of  an  eight- weeks-old 
godson  the  outlines  of  a  world  that  was  clattering  into  ruins 
during  the  twelve  months  anterior  to  his  birth.  Even  were  I 
desirous  of  writing  a  social  history  of  England  for  the  last 
thirty  years,  I  should  be  placing  myself  in  competition  with 

II 


12  SONIA 

men  more  able  and  better  equipped  than  I  am  to  describe  the 
politics,  the  diplomacy,  the  economics,  the  art  and  the  social 
habits  of  the  past  generation.  It  is  wiser  to  attempt  nothing  so 
comprehensive,  but  to  limit  myself  to  those  facets  of  English 
life  which  I  have  been  compelled — nolens  volens — to  study. 
Others  will  come  after  me  to  tell  the  story  in  its  entirety ;  the 
utmost  I  attempt  to  record  is  circumscribed,  personal  reminis- 
cence. 

If,  therefore,  this  book  ever  find  favour  in  the  eyes  for 
which  it  was  written,  it  will  be  because  I  have  set  narrow 
limits  to  my  task  and  confined  myself  resolutely  to  those  limits. 
For  thirty  years  I  have  lived  among  what  the  world  has  agreed 
loosely  to  call  "the  Governing  Classes."  The  title  may  already 
be  obsolescent ;  sentence  of  proscription  may,  as  I  write,  have 
been  passed  on  those  who  bear  it.  At  the  lowest  computation 
those  classes  will  soon  have  changed  beyond  recognition  in 
personnel,  function,  power  and  philosophy.  This  book  may 
then  perhaps  have  something  of  historical  value  in  portraying 
a  group  of  men  and  women  who  were  at  the  same  time  my 
personal  friends  and  representative  of  those  Governing  Classes 
in  politics,  journalism,  commerce  and  society.  I  have  drawn 
them  as  I  saw  them,  without  attempting  to  select  or  label  pre- 
dominant types.  And  if  there  be  blank  spaces  on  my  canvas, 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  I  only  set  out  to  paint  that  social 
group  with  which  I  happened  to  be  brought  in  contact. 

Charles  Templeton's  difficulty  in  determining  his  initial 
date  is  in  smaller  degree  my  difficulty.  I  could  give  long  in- 
troductory accounts  of  David  O'Rane's  wanderings  before  he 
reached  England,  or  of  Jim  Loring's  boyhood  in  Scotland,  or 
the  early  phases  of  the  Dainton  fortunes.  To  do  so,  however, 
would  involve  a  sacrifice  of  the  unities  of  time  and  place ;  and 
when  the  work  was  done  I  should  be  left  with  the  feeling 
that  it  would  have  been  better  done  at  first  hand  by  O'Rane 
himself,  or  Lady  Loring,  or  Sir  Roger  Dainton.  It  is  equally 
difficult  to  know  where  the  final  line  is  to  be  drawn.  Nearly 
a  year  has  already  passed  since  the  events  recorded  in  the 
last  chapter,  yet  that  same  chapter  brings  no  sort  of  finality 
to  the  career  of  O'Rane,  and,  should  another  hand  care  to  use1 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES     13 

them,  the  materials  for  another  volume  are  rapidly  accumu- 
lating. 

I  place  my  first  chapter  in  the  late  summer  of  1898,  my 
last  in  August  1915.    Neither  date  has  been  arbitrarily  chosen. 


In  1898  the  month  of  September  found  me  a  guest  of  Roger 
Dainton  at  Crowley  Court  in  the  County  of  Hampshire. 

In  the  guide-books  the  house  is  described  as  a  "stately 
Elizabethan  mansion,"  but  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing 
it  was  still  a  labyrinth  of  drainage  cuttings  and  a  maze  of 
scaffolding  and  ladders.  Suddenly  enriched  by  the  early  pur- 
chase of  tied-houses,  the  Daintons  had  that  year  moved  five 
miles  away  from  Melton  town,  school  and  brewery.  Even  in 
those  early  days  I  suppose  Mrs.  Dainton  was  not  without  social 
aspirations,  and  when  her  husband  was  elected  Unionist  mem- 
ber for  the  Melton  Division  of  Hampshire,  she  seized  the 
opportunity  of  moving  at  one  step  into  a  house  where  her 
position  was  unassailable  and  away  from  a  source  of  income 
that  was  ever  her  secret  embarrassment. 

Roger  Dainton,  affluent,  careless  and  indolent,  accepted  the 
changed  life  with  placid  resignation.  The  syndicate  shoot 
was  left  behind  with  the  humdrum  Melton  Club  and  the 
infinitely  small  society  that  clustered  in  the  precincts  of  the 
cathedral.  Mrs.  Dainton,  big,  bustling  and  indefatigably 
capable,  fought  her  way  door  by  door  into  South  Hampshire 
society,  while  her  husband  shot  statedly  with  Lord  Pebble- 
ridge  at  Bishop's  Cross,  yawned  through  the  long  mornings 
on  the  Bench,  and,  when  Parliament  was  not  sitting,  lounged 
through  his  grounds  in  a  shooting  jacket  with  perennially  torn 
pocket,  his  teeth  gripping  a  black,  gurgling  briar  that  defied 
Mrs.  Dainton'siUtmost  efforts  to  smarten  his  appearance. 

The  atmosphere  of  the  rambling  old  house  was  well  suited 
to  schoolboy  holidays,  for  we  rose  and  retired  when  we  pleased, 
ate  continuously,  and  were  never  required  to  dress  for  dinner. 
The  so-called  library,  admirably  adapted  to  stump  cricket  on 
wet  days,  contained  nothing  more  arid  than  "The  Sportsman," 


14  SONIA 

"Country  Life,"  and  bound  volumes  of  "The  Badminton 
Magazine,"  while  Mrs.  Dainton's  spasmodic  efforts  to  discuss 
the  contents  of  her  last  Mudie  box  met  with  prompt  and 
effective  discouragement.  The  society,  in  a  word,  was  health- 
ily barbarian,  from  our  host,  aged  forty-three,  to  his  over- 
indulged only  daughter,  Sonia,  aged  eleven.  (  Since  the  days 
when  Tom  Dainton  and  I  were  fellow-fags,  it  had  been  part 
of  my  annual  programme  to  say  good-bye  to  my  mother  and 
sister  a  week  before  the  opening  of  the  Melton  term,  cross 
from  Kingston  to  Holyhead,  call  on  Bertrand  Oakleigh,  my 
guardian,  in  London,  and  proceed  to  Crowley  Court  for  the  last 
week  of  the  summer  holidays.  It  was  an  unwritten  law  of  our 
meetings  that  none  but  true  Meltonians  should  be  invited, 
and,  though  the  party  grew  gradually  in  size,  the  rule  was 
never  relaxed. 

In  1898  six  of  us  sat  down  to  dinner  with  our  host  and 
hostess  on  the  first  night  of  our  visit.  Sutcliffe,  the  captain 
of  the  school,  sat  on  Mrs.  Dainton's  right  hand — a  small-boned, 
spectacled  boy  with  upstanding  red  hair  and  beak-shaped  nose, 
who  was  soon  to  be  buried  in  Cambridge  with  a  Trinity  Fel- 
lowship rolled  against  the  mouth  of  the  tomb.  On  the  other 
side  sat  Jim  Loring,  the  Head  of  Matheson's,  as  ever  not 
more  than  half  awake,  his  sleepy  grey  eyes  and  loosely-knit 
big  frame  testifying  that  for  years  past  he  had  overgrown 
his  strength  and  would  require  some  years  more  of  un- 
troubled leisure  before  he  could  overcome  his  natural  lethargy. 
He  had  reached  the  school  as  "Loring,"  and  though  an  uncle 
had  died  in  the  interval  and  his  father  was  now  the  Marquess 
Loring,  no  one  troubled  to  remember  that  he  was  in  conse 
quence  Earl  of  Chepstow, — or  indeed  anything  but  "old  Jim 
Loring," — imperturbable,  dreamy,  detached  and  humourous, 
with  quaint  mediaeval  ideals  and  a  worldly  knowledge  some- 
what in  advance  of  his  years.  To  me  he  occasionally  unbent, 
but  the  rest  of  the  microcosm — his  parents  and  masters  in- 
cluded— found  him  as  enigmatic  and  unenthusiastic  as  he  was 
placid  and  good-looking.  "There  is  nothing  he  cannot  or  will 
do" — as  Villiers,  the  master  of  the  Under  Sixth,  had  written 
in  momentary  exasperation  some  terms  before. 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    15 

At  the  other  end  of  the  table  I  sat  on  one  side  of  Dainton 
with  Draycott,  the  house  captain  of  football,  opposite  me — 
a  blue-eyed,  fair-haired  boy  with  a  confounding  knowledge 
of  early  Italian  painting  and  a  remarkable  pride  in  his  personal 
appearance.  The  two  remaining  chairs  were  occupied  by  Tom 
and  Sam  Dainton.  Tom  was  at  this  time  of  Herculean  build, 
with  arms  and  shoulders  of  a  giant — a  taciturn  boy  with  a 
deep  voice,  and  no  idea  in  his  head  apart  from  cricket,  of 
which  he  was  now  captain.  He  and  I  had  stumbled  into  the 
friendship  of  propinquity,  and  there  had  never  been  any 
reason  for  dropping  it,  though  I  cannot  flatter  myself  he 
found  my  company  more  enlivening  than  I  found  his.  On 
the  opposite  side  of  the  table  sat  Sam,  as  yet  a  Meltonian  only 
in  embryo,  though  we  expected  him  to  be  of  the  elect  in  a 
week's  time. 

The  one  member  of  the  family  not  present  w;as  Sonia,  the 
only  daughter,  who,  in  consideration  of  her  eleventh  birthday, 
had  been  allowed  to  stay  up  till  a  quarter  to  eight,  but  no 
later.  I  suppose  the  child  got  her  looks  from  her  mother, 
though  by  this  time  Mrs.  Dainton  was  verging  on  stoutness, 
with  a  mottled  skin  and  hair  beginning  to  seem  dry  and 
lustreless.  Sonia,  with  her  velvety  brown  eyes,  her  white  skin 
and  her  dark  hair  certainly  owed  nothing  to  her  father,  who 
was  one  of  the  most  commonplace  men  I  have  ever  met, 
whether  in  mind  or  appearance.  Of  medium  height,  with  a 
weatherbeaten  face  and  mouse-coloured  hair,  he  was  growing 
fleshy — with  that  uneven  distribution  of  flesh  that  assails  so 
many  men  of  his  age — and  suggesting  to  an  observer  that  eat- 
ing and  exercise  were  now  moving  in  inverse  ratio.  I  liked 
him  then — as  I  like  him  still — but  in  looking  back  over  seven- 
teen years  I  find  my  regard  mingled  with  a  certain  pathos ;  he 
was  so  ineffectual,  so  immature  and  of  so  uncritical  a  mind : 
above  all,  he  was  so  grateful  to  anyone  who  would  be  polite  to 
him  in  his  own  house. 

The  Entrance  Examination  at  Melton  took  place  the  day 
before  term,  and  in  the  afternoon  Mrs.  Dainton  suggested  that 
some  of  us  should  drive  over  to  the  school,  inquire  how  Sam 
had  fared  and  bring  him  back  to  Crowley  Court  for  dinner. 


1 6  SONIA 

As  the  others  were  playing  tennis,  Sonia  and  I  climbed  into 
the  high  four-wheeled  dogcart  and  were  slowly  driven  by  her 
father  up  the  five-mile  hill  that  separated  us  from  the  town. 

Melton  is  one  of  those  places  that  never  change.  In  a 
hundred  years'  time  I  have  no  doubt  it  will  present  the  same 
appearance  of  warm,  grey,  placid  beauty  as  on  that  September 
afternoon,  when  we  emerged  from  the  Forest  to  find  the  school 
standing  out  against  the  setting  sun  like  a  group  of  temples  on 
a  modern  Acropolis.  Leaving  the  dogcart  at  the  "Raven," 
we  covered  the  last  half  mile  on  foot,  and,  while  Dainton  called 
on  the  Head,  I  took  Sonia  to  Big  Gateway  and  led  her  on  a 
tour  of  inspection  round  the  school.  After  seventeen  years 
and  for  all  its  familiarity  I  can  recall  the  beauty  of  the  scene 
in  its  unwonted  holiday  desolation.  Standing  in  the  Gate- 
way with  our  faces  to  the  north,  we  had  College  to  our  right 
and  the  Head's  house  to  our  left ;  on  the  eastern,  western  and 
northern  sides  of  the  Great  Court  lay  the  nine  boarding-houses, 
and  through  the  middle  of  Matheson's,  in  line  with  Big 
Gateway,  ran  the  Norman  tunnel  leading  to  Cloisters,  Chapel 
and  Great  School. 

It  was  Sonia's  first  opportunity  of  seeing  over  Melton, 
and  she  begged  me  to  miss  nothing.  We  crossed  the  worn  flags 
of  Great  Court  to  the  waterless  fountain  in  the  middle,  lin- 
gered to  admire  the  Virginia  creeper  swathing  the  crumbling 
grey  walls  as  a  mantle  of  scarlet  silk,  and  passed  through 
the  iron-studded  oak  door  of  Matheson's.  She  inspected  our 
row  of  studies  and  looked  out  through  the  closely  barred 
windows  to  the  practice  ground  of  Little  End,  where  the 
groundman  and  two  assistants  were  erecting  goal  posts.  For 
a  while  we  wandered  round  Hall  examining  the  carved  tables 
and  forms,  the  giant  chimney-piece  from  which  new  boys  had 
to  sing  their  melancholy  songs  on  the  first  Saturday  of  term, 
the  great  silver  shields  that  the  house  had  held  in  unbroken 
tenure  for  nine  years,  and  the  consciously  muscular  Cup  Team 
groups  that  adorned  the  walls  in  two  lines  above  the  lockers. 

Leaving  Matheson's  we  strolled  through  Cloisters,  and  I 
pointed  out  the  bachelor  masters'  quarters  on  one  side  and  on 
the  other  the  famous  "Fighting  Green,"  in  which  no  fights  had 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    17 

taken  place  within  human  memory.  We  put  our  heads  inside 
Chapel,  crossed  into  Great  School  and  walked  its  length  to 
the  dais  where  stood  Ockley's  Chair,  Bishop  Adam's  Birch 
Table  and  the  carved  seats  of  the  Monitorial  Council  running 
in  a  half-circle  like  the  places  of  the  priests  in  the  Theatre  of 
Dionysus.  I  was  still  descanting  on  the  dignity  of  that  same 
Council,  of  which  I  had  lately  become  a  member,  when  a  bell 
rang  faintly  in  the  distance,  and  we  had  to  retrace  our  steps 
to  meet  the  Entrance  Examination  candidates,  who  were  pour- 
ing out  of  School  Library  and  scattering  in  search  of  their 
anxious  parents  or  guardians. 

Sam  Dainton  headed  the  stream  of  inky-fingered  twelve- 
year-olds,  only  pausing  in  his  precipitant  course  down  School 
Steps  to  roll  his  examination  paper  into  a  hard  ball  and 
thrust  it  inside  the  collar  of  a  smaller,  unknown  and — so  far 
as  I  could  see — entirely  inoffensive  fellow-candidate. 

"How  did  you  get  on  ?"  asked  Sonia. 

"Oh,  I  dunno,"  Sam  answered  modestly;  and  then  to  me, 
"I  say,  Oakleigh,  who  were  Abana  and  Pharpar?" 

I  made  some  discreet  reference  to  the  rivers  of  Damascus. 

"Golly !"  he  moaned,  with  a  face  of  woe.  "I  said  they  were 
the  jewels  in  the  breastplate  of  the  High  Priest.  Never  mind. 
Can't  be  helped.  The  chap  in  front  of  me  said  they  were  Eli's 
two  sons,  but  that's  rot,  'cos  they  were  Gog  and  Magog.  I  got 
that  right.  Did  you  come  over  alone  ?" 

"Your  father's  here,"  I  said.  "He's  bribing  Burgess  not  to 
read  your  papers.  We'd  better  get  back  to  Big  Gateway." 

We  were  half-way  across  Great  Court  when  one  of  the 
Head's  library  windows  opened,  and  Burgess,  with  his  quaint, 
mannered  courtesy,  asked  permission  to  have  a  word  with 
me  if  I  could  spare  him  the  time.  I  entered  what  was  then, 
and  probably  is  still,  the  untidiest  room  in  England.  Since 
the  death  of  his  wife  ten  years  before,  Burgess  had  ruled,  or 
been  ruled,  with  the  aid  of  a  capable  housekeeper  whose  tenure 
of  office  depended  on  her  undertaking  never  to  touch  a  book  or 
paper  in  the  gloomy,  low-ceilinged  library.  From  that  bargain 
she  can  never  have  departed.  Overflowing  the  shelves  and 
tables,  piled  up  in  the  embrasures  of  the  windows,  littered 


1 8  SONIA 

carelessly  in  fireplace  or  wastepaper  basket,  lay  ten  years'  ac- 
cumulation of  reports,  complaints,  presentation  copies,  text- 
books, magazines  and  daily  papers. 

"Some  day  it  must  all  be  swept  and  garnished,  laddie,"  he 
would  say  when  the  last  of  twelve  unsmokable  pipes  had  dis- 
appeared behind  the  coal  box.  "But  I'm  an  old  man,  broken 
with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  this  world.  .  .  .  Never  take  to 
smoking,  laddie;  it's  a  vile,  unclean  practice."  And  pending 
the  day  when  the  Augean  stable  was  to  be  cleansed,  he  would 
walk  down  to  Grantham's,  the  big  Melton  bookseller,  cram  the 
pockets  of  his  cassock  with  new  books,  pick  his  way  slowly 
back  to  the  school,  reading  as  rapidly  as  his  tobacco-stained 
forefinger  could  hack  the  pages,  and  drop  the  newest  acquisi- 
tion in  the  handiest  corner  of  the  dusty,  dim  library. 

"Laddie,  there  is  a  stranger  within  our  gates,  seeking  ad- 
mittance. He  will  not  be  denied." 

Burgess's  meaning  was  seldom  to  be  grasped  in  his  first  or 
second  sentence.  I  waited  while  he  fumbled  for  a  pipe  in  the 
pocket  of  the  old  silk  cassock,  without  which  none  of  us  had 
ever  seen  him.  By  1898,  at  the  age  of  five-and-fifty,  his 
physical  appearance  had  run  through  the  gamut  of  its  changes 
and  become  fixed.  When  last  we  met,  seventeen  years  later, 
his  body  was  no  more  thin  or  bent,  kis  face  no  more  cadaver- 
ous, his  brown  eyes  no  more  melancholy,  his  voice  no  more 
tired  and  his  long  white  hair  no  whit  less  thick  than  on  that 
September  afternoon.  And  thus  he  will  remain  till  a  puff  of 
wind  stronger  than  the  generality  blows  away  the  ascetic, 
wasted  frame,  and  the  gentle,  sing-song  voice  is  heard  no 
more. 

"Where  is  the  divinity  that  doth  hedge  a  king  about?"  he 
demanded  of  Dainton,  or  me,  or  the  world  at  large.  "I  sat  in 
this,  my  Holy  Place,  when  a  serving-man  told  me  that  one 
stood  without  and  would  have  speech  with  me.  I  bade  him 
begone.  'He  insists,'  said  my  serving-man."  Burgess  sighed 
and  gently  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "The  sons  of  Zeruiah 
are  too  hard  for  me.  I  bade  him  enter,  and  there  came  to  me 
a  lad  no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand.  'Thy  name  and  business, 
laddie?'  I  asked.  He  told  me  he  was  known  to  men  as 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    19 

'David  O'Rane,'  a  wanderer  for  the  first  time  setting  foot  in 
the  Promised  Land.  His  speech  was  the  speech  of  men  in  far 
places,  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships  and  behold  the  won- 
ders of  the  Lord.  Shortly  he  bade  me  'See  here,'  and  stated  that 
he  proposed  to  come  to  my  old  school  anyway,  and  that  was 
the  way  he  regarded  the  proposition." 

"An  American,  sir  ?"  I  asked. 

"An  Irishman  from  thine  own  Isle  of  Unrest,  laddie," 
Burgess  answered.  "Journeying  from  Dan  to  Beersheba,  and 
pricking  through  America  on  his  way." 

He  paused,  and  Dainton  asked  what  had  happened  next. 

"He  is  fifteen  years  of  age — a  year  too  old  by  the  rules. 
My  Shibboleths  were  demanded  of  the  young  men  at  nine- 
thirty  this  morning;  by  the  rules  he  is  half  a  day  too  late. 
Rules,  the  laddie  told  me,  were  for  ordinary  men  at  ordinary 
times.  'I,  at  least,'  I  said,  'am  an  ordinary  man.'  And  he 
smiled  and  held  his  peace.  'Who  will  rid  me  of  this  proud 
scholar?'  I  asked,  and  he  answered  not  a  word.  I  threw  him 
books,  and  he  translated  them — Homer  and  Thucydides  and 
the  dark  places  of  Theocritus.  'Thou  art  too  old,  laddie,'  I 
told  him,  'for  me  to  take  thee  in.'  He  walked  to  the  door  and 
I  asked  him  whither  he  went.  'To  a  decent  school,'  he  made 
answer.  'No  decent  school  will  take  Melton's  rejections,'  I 
told  him.  'Then  let  them  share  Melton's  shame,'  he  rejoined. 
I  bade  him  tarry  and  tell  me  of  his  wanderings.  He  sits 
within." 

Burgess  sighed  and  relit  his  pipe.  I  know  few  men  who 
smoke  more  matches. 

"Are  you  admitting  him,  sir?"  I  asked. 

"The  fatherless  child  is  in  God's  keeping,"  answered 
Burgess.  He  turned  to  Dainton  and  murmured,  "You  recall 
the  Liberator  ?" 

Dainton's  eyebrows  moved  up  in  quick  surprise.  "Oh, 
poor  boy !"  he  ejaculated.  It  was  some  while  before  I  was  to 
understand  the  allusion  or  the  comment,  and  I  had  little  time 
now  to  speculate,  as  Burgess  turned  to  address  me. 

"Laddie,  he  will  be  in  Mr.  Matheson's  house,  and  will  sit 
at  the  feet  of  Mr.  Villiers  in  the  Under  Sixth.  Were  I  a  just 


20  SONIA 

man,  I  would  place  him  in  the  Sixth,  but  I  am  old  and  broken 
with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  this  world.  He  must  learn 
humility  of  spirit.  He  must  fag — like  Dainton  minor ;  and  be 
flogged  like  Dainton  minor  if  he  break  our  foolish  rules.  He 
must  wait  for  a  study  and  suffer  on  the  altar  of  sport  in  all 
weathers,  as  a  hundred  thousand  have  done  before  him.  I 
have  communed  secretly  with  thee,  laddie,  and,  when  thou 
goest  hence  to  thine  own  place,  lo!  it  will  be  forgotten  as  a 
dream  that  is  past." 

I  bowed  in  acquiescence. 

"Forget  not  this  one  thing,"  he  added.  "He  is  a  stranger 
within  our  gates,  having  neither  kith  nor  kin.  Much  will  he 
teach  us;  somewhat,  maybe,  can  we  teach  him.  Make  his 
path  smooth,  laddie." 

"I'll  do  my  best,  sir,"  I  promised.  "Where's  he  going  to  be 
till  term  begins  ?" 

"The  Lord  will  provide,"  answered  Burgess  absently.  It 
was  his  invariable  formula  when  at  a  loss  for  a  more  suitable 
reply. 

Dainton  rubbed  his  chin  thoughtfully. 

"Look  here,  Dr.  Burgess,"  he  suggested.  "Why  shouldn't 
I  take  charge  of  him  for  a  night  and  a  day  ?" 

Burgess  eyed  him  thoughtfully. 

"A  night  and  a  day  are  twenty-four  hours,"  he  said. 

"We  shall  be  nine  to  one,"  answered  Dainton  reassuringly. 

"You  have  not  seen  him  yet." 

Burgess  rose  from  his  chair  and  rang  the  bell.  A  moment 
later  the  door  opened,  and  O'Rane  entered  the  library.  He 
was  a  boy  of  medium  height  with  black  hair  parted  in  the  mid- 
dle, after  the  American  fashion,  unusually  large  black  eyes  and 
bronzed  face  and  hands.  Though  the  black  eyes  sometimes 
lost  their  dreaminess  and  became  charged  with  sudden  passion, 
though  the  sunken  cheeks  and  sharply  outlined  bones  of  the 
face  gave  him  something  of  a  starving  animal's  desperation, 
the  reality  was  considerably  less  formidable  than  I  haa 
imagined  from  Burgess's  description.  In  manner  he  was  a 
curious  mixture  of  the  old  and  new.  On  being  introduced,  he 
drew  himself  up  and  clicked  his  heels,  and  in  speaking  he 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    21 

showed  a  tendency  to  gesticulate;  then  without  warning  his 
voice  would  take  on  a  Western  drawl,  and  unexpected  trans- 
atlanticisms  would  crop  up  in  his  speech. 

On  learning  Dainton's  proposal  he  bowed  and  accepted  with 
a  guarded  politeness.  We  made  our  way  into  Great  Court, 
found  Sonia  and  Sam,  and  set  out  for  the  "Raven."  On 
reaching  home  I  mentioned  to  Loring  that  we  had  a  new  boy 
requiring  a  certain  amount  of  special  consideration;  we  span 
a  coin,  and  Loring  took  O'Rane  for  a  fag,  while  Sam  was 
allotted  to  me.  The  stranger  within  our  gates  said  little  that 
night  or  next  morning,  though  all  of  us  tried,  one  after  an- 
other, to  engage  him  in  conversation.  The  ways  of  the  house 
seemed  unfamiliar  to  him,  and  he  wandered  round  thoughtfully 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  rather  ostentatiously  avoiding 
any  advances. 

The  next  evening,  after  an  early  dinner,  the  racing  omnibus 
was  brought  round  to  the  door.  Tom  Dainton,  looking  like 
a  prize-fighter  with  his  bony,  red  face  and  vast  double-breasted 
overcoat,  clambered  on  to  the  box-seat ;  Loring,  recumbent  in 
an  arm-chair  till  the  last  possible  moment,  dragged  his  sleepy, 
long  body  upright  and  climbed,  with  a  drowsy  protest,  to  Tom's 
side;  Sutcliffe,  with  his  shock  of  red  hair  bared  to  the  night 
and  his  spectacles  gleaming  in  the  light  of  the  lamps,  hurried 
the  immaculate  and  aesthetic  Draycott  into  place  and  scrambled 
up  behind  him.  Sam,  overcome  with  sudden  timidity  and  a 
sense  that  the  familiar  was  fading  past  recall,  kissed  his  mother 
and  mounted  shyly,  indicating  a  vacant  seat  for  O'Rane.  I 
stayed  behind  to  check  the  luggage,  unearth  the  coach-horn 
and  wave  good-bye,  then  leapt  on  the  back  step  and  gave  the 
signal  for  departure. 

As  we  started  down  the  drive  at  a  canter,  our  hosts  stood 
silhouetted  against  the  lights  of  the  hall.  Dainton  removed  one 
hand  from  the  torn  pocket  of  the  old  shooting- jacket  and 
waved  farewell;  Mrs.  Dainton  bowed  majestically;  Sonia, 
bare-legged  and  sandalled,  with  a  gold  bracelet  round  one 
ankle  and  the  face  of  a  Sistine  Madonna,  raised  both  hands  to 
her  lips  and  blew  a  cloud  of  tempestuous  kisses. 

Loring  turned  encouragingly  to  Sam. 


22  SONIA 

"My  lad,  I  wouldn't  be  in  your  shoes  for  a  thousand 
pounds  this  coming  year." 

Sam  smiled  without  conviction. 

"The  tumbril  passed  rapidly  down  the  Rue  St.  Honore," 
Loring  went  on,  "amid  the  jeers  of  the  populace.  This  day's 
victims  included  the  younger  Dainton  and  the  emigre  O'Rane. 
Both  preserved  an  attitude  of  stoical  indifference  till  they  came 
in  sight  of  the  Place  de  la  Revolution,  when  Dainton  broke 
down  and  wept  piteously.  .  .  ." 

"I  didn't,"  said  Sam  indignantly. 

Loring  laughed  to  himself. 

"Cheer  up,  Sambo,"  he  said.  "You're  not  really  to  be  pitied. 
O'Rane's  going  to  be  my  fag." 

"Poor  brute,"  said  Draycott. 

"Who?    O'Rane  or  me?" 

"O'Rane,  of  course." 

Loring  smiled  round  the  company,  turned  in  his  seat  and 
'Composed  himself  for  slumber.  O'Rane  looked  with  interest 
and  a  shade  of  defiance  from  one  face  to  another. 


ii 


The  first  few  days  of  the  school  year  were  always  a  busy 
time  for  the  seniors.  Matheson,  a  mild-eyed  mathematician  in 
Holy  Orders,  with  a  family  defying  even  his  powers  of  enu- 
meration, observed  the  wholesome  principle  of  leaving  the 
monitors  to  take  care  of  his  house — a  task  which,  I  can  say 
after  six  years'  experience,  one  generation  after  another  per- 
formed with  efficiency,  justice  and  a  sense  of  responsibility. 
His  official  duties,  so  far  as  we  could  see,  were  confined  to 
carving  the  joints  at  luncheon,  giving  leave-out,  wandering  in 
a  transient,  embarrassed  fashion  round  Hall  when  the  monitors 
were  taking  prep.,  and  scrawling  his  endorsement  of  his 
colleagues'  scurrility  and  invective  at  the  foot  of  the  monthly 
reports. 

When  not  in  form  nor  engaged  in  one  or  other  of  these 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    23 

functions,  he  retired  to  a  faded  study  and  struggled  with  the 
weekly  acrostic  in  "Vanity  Fair."  Once  each  season,  when  the 
Cup  Team  had  successfully  challenged  all  comers  for  posses- 
sion of  the  shield,  Matheson  would  emerge  dazedly  from  the 
half-light,  summon  the  house  to  a  supper  in  Hall,  and  after  a 
prodigal  distribution  of  steak-and-kidney  pie,  ham,  tongue,  cold 
fowl,  brawn,  jelly,  meringues,  jam  roll,  lemonade  and  diluted 
claret-cup,  hold  forth  with  shining  eyes  and  throbbing  voice 
on  the  glories  of  British  Sport  and  the  umbilical  connection 
between  the  playing  fields  of  Eton  and  the  battle  of  Waterloo. 
It  was  always  a  tonrs-de-force  of  simple-minded  sincerity; 
he  spoke  as  one  whose  heart  was  stirred  to  its  depths  by  the 
growing  glories  of  his  house.  And  we  cheered  encouragingly 
and  thought  the  better  of  him  for  it. 

There  was  little  opportunity  of  making  O'Rane's  path 
smooth  in  the  early  days.  At  Loring's  orders  and  in  accord- 
ance with  the  immemorial  "Substance  and  Shadow"  institu- 
tion, O'Rane  was  set  at  the  feet  of  a  senior  fag,  by  name  May- 
hew,  with  instructions  to  learn  all  that  was  to  be  learned  dur- 
ing his  days  of  sanctuary.  For  a  fortnight  no  master  could 
send  him  to  Detention  School  nor  give  him  lines ;  he  could 
dodge  every  practice  game  on  Little  End,  wear  button  boots, 
break  bounds,  refuse  to  fag,  cut  roll-call,  or  talk  in  prep,  with 
complete  physical  impunity.  At  the  end  of  the  second  week 
he  had  theoretically  tasted  of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge.  Ignor- 
ance of  rules  could  no  longer  be  pleaded  in  extenuation  of  their 
breach,  and  justice  went  untempered  by  mercy,  save  in  that 
no  boy  could  be  thrashed  twice  in  ten  days  without  written  au- 
thorization from  his  housemaster  or  the  Head. 

On  the  last  evening  of  grace  I  was  seated  in  Loring's  study 
after  prep,  when  Mayhew  came  in  with  the  cocoa  saucepan 
and  cups. 

"Does  O'Rane  know  the  rules  now?"  Loring  asked.  "I 
haven't  seen  him  on  Little  End  so  far." 

"I  think  I've  told  him  everything,"  Mayhew  answered. 

"Has  he  got  his  footer  change  yet  ?" 

Mayhew  hesitated  in  some  embarrassment. 

"He  hadn't  the  last  time  I  talked  to  him  about  it." 


24  SONIA 

"He  must  look  sharp,"  said  Loring.  "Four  times  next 
week,  or — he  knows  the  penalty." 

Mayhew  nodded,  and  the  subject  was  dropped  for  a  week. 
Then  I  was  summoned  to  a  Monitors'  Meeting.  Loring,  as 
ever,  lay  full  length  on  the  floor  in  front  of  his  fire,  Tom 
Dainton  sprawled  in  the  arm-chair,  little  Draycott  swung  his 
legs  in  their  carefully  creased  trousers  from  one  corner  of  the 
table,  and  I  occupied  the  only  vacant  seat  in  the  window. 

"About  this  fellow  O'Rane,"  yawned  Loring  from  the 
hearthrug.  "He's  cut  Little  End  all  this  week,  so  I  propose 
to  have  him  up  and  inquire  the  reason.  If  none's  forthcoming, 
he  must  die  the  death.  All  agreed?" 

He  dragged  himself  to  his  feet,  picked  his  cane  from  the 
wastepaper  basket  and  dealt  two  echoing  blows  to  the  lower 
panels  of  the  door.  The  studies  in  Matheson's  were  in  a  line, 
opening  out  of  the  long  Hall  where  the  juniors  lived  and 
worked  and  ragged  and  had  their  lockers.  Two  kicks  on  a 
study  door  meant  that  the  monitor  inside  required  a  fag,  and 
it  was  the  business  of  the  junior  in  Hall  at  that  moment — 
"lag  of  Hall,"  as  he  was  called — to  eliminate  time  and  space 
in  answering  the  summons.  Two  blows  of  a  cane  indicated 
a  potential  execution.  A  sudden  silence  descended  on  Hall ; 
two  light  feet  jumped  over  a  form,  there  was  a  hurried  knock- 
ing, and  a  breathless,  scared  junior  thrust  his  head  in  at  the 
door. 

"Send  O'Rane  here." 

Through  the  hushed  Hall  a  sigh  of  relief  went  up  from 
the  forty  odd  boys  who  were  not  O'Rane.  The  name  was 
shouted  by  one  after  another,  like  the  summons  of  a  witness 
in  Court.  "O'Rane!  O'Rane!  Spitfire,  you're  wanted! 
What's  it  for,  Spitfire?  Hurry  up,  they're  muck  sick  if  you 
keep  'em  waiting!"  Mayhew's  voice  sympathetically  mur- 
mured, "Bad  luck,  old  man  !"  Then  there  came  a  second  knock 
at  the  door. 

Loring  stood  with  his  back  to  the  fire,  bending  his  cane 
into  an  arc  round  one  knee. 

"Have  you  been  down  to  Little  End  this  week  ?"  he  asked. 

"No." 


25 

"You  know  you  have  to  go  four  times  a  week  ?" 

"Yes." 

"Have  you  leave  off  from  Matheson  ?" 

"No." 

"Do  you  wish  to  appeal  ?" 

Within  living  memory  no  boy  in  Matheson's  had  ever 
exercised  his  right  of  appeal — a  tribute,  I  hope,  to  the  sub- 
stantial justice  of  succeeding  generations  of  monitors.  O'Rane 
looked  round  at  the  four  of  us  with  a  mixture  of  sullenness 
and  timidity  in  his  expressive  black  eyes. 

"Guess  I'm  up  against  some  blamed  rule  ?"  he  hazarded. 

Loring  nodded. 

"Then  there's  mighty  little  use  in  plaguing  old  man 
Matheson." 

Loring  threw  his  cane  over  to  Draycott,  the  captain  of  foot- 
ball. "Clear  Hall,"  he  said  to  O'Rane. 

On  receipt  of  the  order  there  was  a  scuffling  of  feet  as 
forty  boys  jumped  up  from  tables,  forms  and  window-seats. 
"Clear  Hall"  was  taken  up  as  the  marching  refrain,  and,  as 
the  monitors  filed  in  by  one  door,  the  last  stragglers  hurried 
out  by  the  other,  and  eighty  critical,  experienced  ears  were 
expectantly  strained  to  appraise  the  artistry  of  Draycott's 
execution.  Loring,  who  was  equally  averse  from  thrashing  a 
boy  or  being  present  when  another  carried  out  the  sentence, 
crossed  the  room  and  gazed  out  of  the  window. 

It  was  soon  over.  O'Rane  hurried  out  of  Hall,  breathing 
quickly  and  with  rather  a  flushed  face.  As  he  opened  the 
door,  interested  voices  chorused,  "Bad  luck,  Spitfire !"  "Who 
did  it?"  "I  say,  you  got  it  pretty  tight,  Spitfire!"  "Was  it 
Draycott?  He's  not  bad  for  a  beginner."  We  filed  back  to 
the  study;  the  date,  offence  and  victim's  name  were  entered 
in  the  Black  Book  and  initialled  by  Draycott,  and  we  dispersed 
to  our  own  quarters. 

A  week  later  Loring  ambled  into  my  study  with  the  remark 
that  O'Rane  had  still  failed  to  put  fn  an  appearance  on  Little 
End. 

"I  don't  know  what's  the  matter  with  him,"  he  said.  "If  he 
thinks  by  just  being  obstinate  .  .  ."  He  left  the  sentence 


26  SONIA 

unfinished.  All  his  life  Loring  had  the  makings  of  a  martinet, 
and  when  roused  from  his  constitutional  lethargy  could  him- 
self be  as  obstinate  as  most  people.  "He's  laying  up  trouble 
for  his  little  self  when  the  week's  out,  if  he  isn't  careful." 

"What  sort  of  a  fag  is  he?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  not  bad.  Always  looks  as  if  he'd  like  to  throw  the 
boots  at  my  head  instead  of  taking  'em  to  the  boot-room. 
That's  just  his  fun,  though — the  playful  way  of  the  vengeful 
Celt.  The  only  thing  I  care  about  is  that  he  takes  them  there." 

"I  expect  he'll  shake  down  in  time,"  I  said. 

Loring  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  yawned.  "He's  pretty 
generally  barred  in  Hall.  Never  speaks  to  anyone,  and,  if 
anyone  speaks  to  him,  it  usually  ends  in  a  scrap.  He's  got 
the  temper  of  the  very  devil.  The  best  thing  that  could  happen 
to  him  would  be  if  twenty  of  them  sat  on  his  head  and  ragged 
him  scientifically,  just  to  show  him  he's  not  God  Almighty's 
elder  brother,  even  if  he  did  get  into  the  Under  Sixth  straight 
away." 

The  end  of  the  week  showed  no  improvement,  and  O'Rane 
was  once  more  had  up  and  thrashed.  A  fortnight  later  the 
procedure  was  faithfully  repeated.  It  was  a  Saturday  night, 
and  when  execution  had  been  done,  I  stayed  behind  in  Lor- 
ing's  study  after  Draycott  and  Dainton  had  left  us.  There 
was  no  prep.,  and  the  juniors  were  reading,  fighting,  singing, 
and  roasting  chestnuts  till  prayer-time. 

"You  know  I'm  about  sick  of  this,"  remarked  Loring,  medi- 
tatively stirring  the  fire  with  the  richly  carved  leg  of  a  chair 
purloined  from  Draycott's  study. 

"O'Rane?"  I  asked. 

"Yes  ;  Dainton  pretty  well  cut  him  in  two  to-night.  It's  like 
hitting  a  girl." 

"He's  a  tough  little  beast,"  I  remarked  for  want  of  some- 
thing better  to  say. 

"He's  a  pig-headed  little  devil,"  Loring  rejoined  irritably. 
"What  does  he  think  he  gains  by  it  ?  Does  he  imagine  we  shall 
get  tired  of  it  in  time  ?" 

"Don't  ask  me,"  I  said. 

He  rollfed  over  on  one  side  and  banged  the  door  with  the 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    27 

chair-leg.  "Send  O'Rane  here,"  he  said,  when  a  fag  answered 
the  summons,  and  to  me  as  the  door  closed,  "I  propose  to  ask 
him." 

O'Rane,  when  he  appeared,  looked  white  and  tired,  but 
there  was  a  sullen,  smouldering  fire  in  his  dark  eyes,  and  his 
under-lip  was  thrust  truculently  forward.  Silently  he  put  the 
saucepan  on  the  fire,  produced  cocoa  and  a  cake  from  one  of 
the  cupboards  and  set  about  opening  a  fresh  tin  of  condensed 
milk. 

"Is  there  anything  else  you  want?"  he  asked,  when  the  task 
was  finished. 

"Yes;  I  should  like  a  moment's  conversation  with  you. 
Take  the  arm-chair." 

Silently  the  order  was  obeyed.  As  I  looked  at  the  thin 
wrists  and  ankles,  the  slight  frame  made  the  slighter  by  the 
loose  American-cut  trousers,  I  appreciated  the  justice  of 
Loring's  remark  about  'hitting  a  girl.' 

"What  have  I  done  now?"  he  asked  wearily. 

Loring  propped  his  back  against  the  wall. 

"Look  here,  young  man,  does  it  amuse  you  to  be  thrashed 
once  in  ten  days  ?" 

O'Rane's  eyes  burned  with  defiance. 

"Guess  I  can  hold  out  as  long  as  you." 

"That  wasn't  my  question,"  said  Loring.    "Does  it  .  .  .?" 

"D'you  think  it  amuses  anyone  to  be  thrashed  by  Dainton  ?" 

"No.  And  it  doesn't  amuse  Dainton  to  thrash  you,  or  the 
rest  of  us  to  huve  to  look  on.  I  don't  know  whether  you 
think  you'll  tire  us  out.  If  you  do,  it's  only  fair  to  warn  you 
that  as  long  as  I  am  head  of  this  house  I  propose  to  see  that 
the  rules  are  obeyed." 

O'Rane  rose  from  his  chair  as  though  the  interview  were 
ending. 

"Guess  I've  stuck  out  worse  than  this  in  my  time,"  he  ob- 
served. 

Loring  waved  him  back  to  his  chair.  "What's  the  diffi- 
culty?" he  demanded.  "Why  won't  you  play  footer  like  every- 
body else?" 

O'Rane  snorted  contemptuously. 


28  SONIA 

"I  came  here  to  be  educated,  not  to  kick  a  dime  ball  about." 
We  were  in  the  days  prior  to  "Stalky  and  Co.";  "The 
Islanders"  lay  in  the  womb  of  time ;  never  before  had  I  heard 
public-school  sport  criticized,  at  any  rate  inside  a  public  school. 
Loring  expounded  the  approved  defence  of  games :  their  bene- 
fit to  health,  the  fostering  of  a  communal  spirit,  good  temper 
in  defeat,  moderation  in  triumph.  For  a  man  who  had  aban- 
doned Big  Side  on  the  day  when  attendance  there  ceased  to  be 
compulsory  for  him,  the  exposition  was  astonishingly  eloquent. 

"Guess  I  didn't  come  here  for  that,"  was  all  O'Rane  would 
answer. 

"Afraid  you'll  find  it's  one  of  the  incidentals,"  Loring  re- 
joined. "I've  been  through  it,  Oakleigh's  been  through  it,  we've 
all  been  through  it.  It's  part  of  the  discipline  of  the  place — • 
like  fagging.  You  don't  refuse  to  do  that." 

"I'd  cleaned  a  saucepan  or  two  before  I  came  here.  'Sides, 
that  doesn't  take  time  like  footling  away  an  afternoon  on  Little 
End." 

Loring  sat  with  his  chin  on  his  knees,  perpending  his  next 
words.  I  took  occasion  to  ask  how  O'Rane  spent  his  precious 
afternoons. 

"In  the  library  mostly.  Sometimes  in  the  town  hall.  Old 
man  Burgess  gave  me  leave." 

"What  in  the  name  of  fortune  d'you  find  to  do  there?"  I 
asked. 

"It's  the  only  place  hereabouts  where  they  keep  conti- 
nental papers.  I've  got  some  leeway  to  make  up." 

We  sat  in  silence  till  the  saucepan  boiled,  and  Loring  start- 
ed handing  round  the  cocoa. 

"Then  we're  to  have  a  repetition  of  this  business  every  ten 
days  till  you  get  into  the  Sixth?  Tell  me — frankly — are  you 
enjoying  yourself  here?" 

"Reckon  I  didn't  come  here  to  enjoy  myself." 

Loring  sighed  impatiently. 

"Do,  for  the  Lord's  sake,  stick  to  the  question,"  he  said. 

O'Rane's  lips  curled  in  a  sneer  that  was  almost  audible  be- 
fore he  spoke. 

"I'm  having  a  real  bully  tftne  in  a  nickle-plated  public 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    29 

school  with  the  English  aristocracy  crawling  round  like  ants 
on  a  side-walk."  The  words  poured  out  in  a  single  breath. 
"Guess  I  can't  help  enjoying  myself." 

"D'you  get  on  well  with  the  other  fellows  ?" 

"Would  you  get  on  well  in  the  middle  of  a  flock  of  sheep?" 

Loring  shook  his  head  with  a  gesture  of  despair. 

"You  know,  you're  not  giving  yourself  a  fair  chance," 
he  told  him.  "What's  the  point  of  going  through  life  with 
your  hand  against  every  man?" 

"And  every  man's  hand  against  me." 

"I  dare  say.    Whose  fault  is  it,  you  silly  ass?" 

O'Rane  laughed  ironically. 

"Mine  without  a  doubt." 

Loring  tried  a  fresh  cast. 

"How  d'you  get  on  with  Villiers?"  he  asked. 

"Like  oil  and  water.  He  sees  fit  to  make  fun  of  me 
before  the  form — says  I  can't  talk  English  because  I  say 
'grass'  and  not  'grarse'  like  the  sheep.  If  I  can't  talk  Eng- 
lish, I  can't — but  I  can  talk  to  him  in  Russian,  German, 
Italian,  French,  Spanish,  Gaelic  and  Magyar.  Then  he  reports 
me  to  the  Head." 

I  did  my  best  not  to  laugh,  but  his  palpable  sense  of 
injustice  was  sufficiently  sincere  to  be  ludicrous. 

"I  now  understand  why  you  go  by  the  name  of  Spitfire," 
Loring  remarked. 

"The  dago  that  first  called  me  that  has  a  broken  thumb 
to  remember  it  by." 

'  At  this  moment  the  prayer-bell  began  to  ring,  and  O'Rane 
jumped  up  from  his  chair.  As  I  strolled  in  to  prayers,  Loring 
called  down  grievous  curses  on  the  race  to  which  O'Rane  and 
I  belonged. 

"What  are  we  going  to  do  with  him,  George?"  he  de- 
manded. "This  is  mere  cruelty  to  children." 

The  answer  came  after  call-over.  O'Rane  passed  us  at 
the  foot  of  the  stairs  on  his  way  to  Middle  Dormitory.  There 
was  the  ghost  of  a  smile  on  his  lips  as  he  bade  us  good-night. 

"Good-night,  O'Rane,"  I  responded. 

"We  shall  meet  in  ten  days'  time." 


30  SONIA 

Loring  linked  arms  with  me  and  entered  Draycott's  study. 
"The  fellow's  mad,  you  know,"  he  decided. 


Ill 


To  give  O'Rane  his  due,  for  nine  days  out  of  ten — or,  in 
less  diplomatic  language,  between  thrashings — he  caused  us 
singularly  little  trouble.  When  Loring,  who  as  a  Catholic 
was  excused  Early  Chapel,  hurried  through  Hall  on  his  way 
to  Mass  at  St.  Peter's,  he  would  find  O'Rane  recumbent  on  a 
form  in  front  of  the  fire,  peacefully  reading  till  first  Roll  Call. 
In  the  afternoon,  when  I  came  bai:k  from  a  walk,  he  would 
have  changed  his  position,  and  I  could  be  sure  of  finding  him 
curled  up  in  a  window-seat  with  the  line  of  his  thin  shoulder- 
blades  clearly  showing  through  his  coat.  As  a  fag  Loring 
reported  him  efficient,  punctual  and  tolerably  obliging, 
though  their  conversation  seldom  matured  into  anything 
more  than  question  and  answer.  The  modus  vivendi  was  un- 
comfortable, but  no  compromise  seemed  possible  without  a 
surrender  of  principle. 

I  believe  Matheson  descended  from  Olympus  on  one 
occasion  and  told  O'Rane  that  such  slackness  in  an  Under- 
Sixth-form  boy  was  a  deplorable  example  to  the  other  juniors. 
The  irresistible  reply  was,  of  course,  that  leisure  could  be 
purchased  at  a  price,  and,  as  no  one  else  seemed  anxious  to 
come  into  avoidable  conflict  with  authority,  the  example 
could  hardly  be  called  effectively  corrupting.  Matheson 
rubbed  his  chin  and  retired  to  think  it  over ;  O'Rane  returned, 
sardonically  smiling,  to  his  book. 

Wijh  the  rest  of  Hall  his  relations  at  this  time  were 
frankly  hostile.  Mayhew,  who  was  too  good-natured  and 
buoyant  ever  to  have  an  enemy,  and  Sam  Dainton,  whose 
salt  he  had  eaten,  were  able  to  preserve  a  show  of  intimacy ; 
between  them  they  induced  him  to  discontinue  parting  his 
hair  in  the  middle,  and  on  one  Leave-out  Day  to  walk  over  for 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  -GATES    31 

luncheon  at  Crowley  Court.  Almost  everyone  else  regarded 
him  with  dislike  tempered  by  a  certain  discreet  fear.  Con- 
versations were  conducted  for  his  benefit  in  approved  Ameri- 
can dialect;  knots  of  boys,  too  numerous  for  one  man  to 
tackle,  gathered  round  and  poured  opprobrium  on  him  when 
he  cut  the  first  round  of  the  Cup  Ties.  Beyond  possibility  of 
doubt  he  was  shown  that  the  one  unforgivable  sin  was 
"Side,"  and  that  he  was  prone  to  commit  that  sin  not  infre- 
quently. More,  he  transgressed  in  unfamiliar  ways.  It  was 
no  ordinary  question  of  wearing  exceptional  clothes,  adopting 
a  lordliness  of  speech,  or  cultivating  an  impressement  of 
manner;  he  frankly  snubbed  the  Hall  veterans  like  Sinclair, 
who  was  in  the  Team,  professed  contemptuous  indifference 
to  the  prestige  or  welfare  of  the  house,  and  on  at  least  one 
occasion  strolled  unconcernedly  into  the  Head's  library 
after  Sunday  Chapel,  thereby  ranking  himself  with  the 
highest  in  the  land.  Theoretically  Burgess  was  at  home  on 
Sunday  evenings  to  anyone  who  cared  to  drop  in  for  a  talk; 
in  practice  the  Sixth,  and  the  Sixth  only,  conceived  them- 
selves capable  of  appreciating  him  or  worthy  of  the  privilege. 

I  had  no  idea  that  one  boy  could  disgruntle  a  house  so 
completely.  Had  his  fellows  been  content  to  leave  him  entirely 
alone,  their  path  and  his  would  have  been  appreciably 
smoother;  passive  disapprobation,  however,  is  a  sterile  policy 
for  a  boy  to  adopt,  and  the  outspoken  asides  and  collective 
imitations  continued  until  O'Rane  put  himself  beyond  the 
pale  of  civilization  by  his  quarrel  with  Sinclair. 

The  material  for  a  breach  had  been  accumulating  for 
some  time.  Sinclair,  an  old  "Colour"  and  the  head  of  the 
previous  season's  bowling  averages,  represented  tradition  and 
the  established  order.  He  was  a  thick-set,  bull-necked  and 
slightly  bandy-legged  boy  of  sixteen  with  a  complete  in- 
ability to  learn  anything  that  had  ever  found  its  way  into  a 
book.  For  five  terms  he  had  resisted  every  effort  of  his 
form-master,  Bracebridge,  to  lever  him  out  of  the  Remove 
and  on  the  eve  of  superannuation  was  still  ranking  as  a  junior, 
the  object  of  veneration  to  new  boys,  of  sympathy  to  those 
who  were  promoted  over  his  head  and  of  inarticulate  dis- 


32  SONIA 

satisfaction  to  himself.  Something  was  wrong  with  a  system 
that  left  him  in  Hall — the  school  slow  bowler,  still  technically 
liable  to  be  fagged.  Something  was  wrong,  and  more  was 
required  to  set  it  right  than  the  veneration  of  new  boys. 
And  then  there  came  a  new  boy  who  boasted  he  had  never 
seen  cricket  played  and  never  wanted  to;  who  cut  football 
practice  and  absented  himself  from  Cup  Ties;  whose  lashing 
tongue  and  the  blasphemous  resources  of  a  dozen  languages 
made  short  work  of  exhortations  and  protests  and  who 
seemingly  came  to  Melton  with  no  other  object  than  a  desire 
to  revile  every  institution  of  public-school  life.  It  was  be- 
neath Sinclair's  dignity  to  hover  on  O'Rane's  flank  and  whistle 
"Yankee  Doodle,"  but  he  made  himself  the  rallying  point 
for  all  sane  arbiters  of  good  taste,  and  indulged  in  immeas- 
urable silent  disapproval. 

One  Saturday  night  I  was  having  cocoa  in  Draycott's 
study — an  aesthetic  room  with  grey  paper  and  a  large  number 
of  Meissonier  artist's-proofs.  For  bravado — or  because 
Matheson  seldom  visited  a  monitor's  study — one  shelf  of  his 
bookcase  was  filled  with  the  "Yellow  Book,"  another  with 
Ibsen's  plays,  and  a  third  with  the  poetry  of  Swinburne.  My 
host,  chiefly  memorable  to  me  in  those  days  by  reason  of  his 
violet  silk  socks,  was  dispensing  hospitality,  when  Loring 
drifted  sleepily  in  and  demanded  to  partake  of  the  feast. 

"You  must  bring  your  own  cup  or  have  a  dirty  one,"  said 
Draycott,  inspecting  his  cupboard  shelves. 

"Bang  on  the  door  and  get  one  washed,"  Loring  recom- 
mended, throwing  himself  on  to  the  rug  in  front  of  the  fire. 

"It's  no  good.  All  the  fags  are  over  in  Matheson's  side, 
getting  Leave  Out  for  Wednesday." 

"Well,  bang  and  go  on  banging.  They  must  come  back 
some  time." 

Draycott  kicked  the  door  and  waited.  The  only  fags  in 
Hall  at  the  time  were  Sinclair,  whose  leave  had  been  stopped 
for  the  rest  of  the  term,  and  O'Rane,  who  was  going  over  to 
Crowley  Court.  Sam  Dainton  had  undertaken  to  get  leave 
for  both.  The  law  and  custom  of  the  constitution  were 
thrown  into  conflict,  for,  while  custom  decreed  that  a  "school 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    33 

Colour"  was  never  fagged,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law  Sinclair  was 
technically  "lag  of  Hall." 

"Fag  wanted,"  Sinclair  murmured,  hardly  looking  up, 
from  his  imposition. 

O'Rane,  who  had  entered  for  the  Shelton  Greek  verse 
prize  and  was  engaged  in  making  his  fair  copy,  glanced  cas- 
ually round  the  room. 

"/'m  not  lag,"  he  observed. 

At  the  sound  of  voices  Draycott  repeated  his  summons. 

"I'm  blowed  if  /  go,"  said  Sinclair.  Then,  as  O'Rane 
sat  bent  over  his  copy  of  verses,  "Go  on,  will  you?" 

"Thy  sweet   child   Sleep,   the  filmy-eyed 

Murmured  like  a  noontide  bee, 
Shall  I  nestle  near  thy  side? 
Would'st  thou  me?    And  I  replied, 
No,  not  thee!" 

O'Rane  read  the  lines  aloud,  dipped  his  pen  in  the  ink 
and  began  writing. 

"Of  course,  if  you  want  me  to  make  you  .  .  ."  said  Sin- 
clair menacingly. 

There  was  a  moment's  pause,  both  boys  rose  from  their 
seats,  Sinclair  took  a  step  forward,  they  closed.  What  im- 
mediately followed  is  not  clear,  but,  when  Draycott  indig- 
nantly flung  his  door  open  and  advanced  into  Hall,  he  found 
Sinclair  sprawling  on  the  floor  and  gasping  out,  "You're 
breaking  my  arm,  damn  you !"  while  O'Rane  sat  on  the  small 
of  his  back  and  twisted  his  arm  every  time  the  words  "Damn 
you !"  passed  his  lips. 

"Are  you  lag,  Sinclair?"  Draycott  asked,  artistically  dis- 
passionate. "Take  this  cup  down  and  wash  it." 

Sinclair  rose  and  obeyed;  O'Rane  returned  to  his  inter- 
rupted copy  of  verses,  and  that  same  evening  after  prayers 
both  were  thrashed  for  the  comprehensive  offense  of 
"ragging." 

"I  hope  they  make  it  hot  for  that  young  swine,"  Loring 
remarked,  as  he  flung  his  cane  into  the  corner.  Many  years 
had  gone  by  since  a  member  of  the  Team  had  been  thrashed, 


34  SONIA 

but  the  case  could  not  be  overlooked.  Feeling  ran  high  in  the 
studies,  and  a  good  deal  higher  in  Hall.  We  could  hear  the 
Democracy  working  itself  into  a  frenzy  of  indignation  and 
sympathy,  and  the  lights  in  Middle  Dormitory  had  not  been 
turned  out  for  more  than  five  minutes  when  Loring's  prayer 
began  to  be  answered. 

We  had  adjourned  to  Tom  Dainton's  Spartan  study — two 
uninhabitable  chairs  and  a  pair  of  boxing-gloves — and  were 
still  discussing  the  enormity  of  O'Rane's  offence  when  a  sound 
of  scuffling  made  itself  heard  above.  Then  there  came  a 
thud,  renewed  scuffling,  two  more  thuds,  some  angry  voices,  a 
fourth  thud,  a  sharp  cry — and  sudden  silence. 

Loring  leapt  to  his  feet  with  anxiety  in  his  grey  eyes. 

"Hope  to  God  they  haven't  killed  him !"  he  exclaimed. 

We  bounded  up  the  stairs  to  Middle  Dormitory.  As  our 
footsteps  rang  out  on  the  stone  floor  of  the  passage,  bare 
feet  pattered  over  bare  boards,  and  a  dozen  spring-mattresses 
creaked  uneasily  as  their  tenants  leapt  back  into  bed. 

"What's  all  this  row  about  ?"  Loring  demanded,  as  he  flung 
open  the  door. 

The  moonlight,  flooding  in  through  the  uncurtained  win- 
dows, showed  us  fifteen  boys  in  bed,  driven  thither  by  an 
instinct  older  and  stronger  than  chivalry;  the  sixteenth  stood 
with  his  head  bent  over  a  basin,  blood  flowing  freely  from  a 
cut  on  his  forehead. 

Loring  picked  his  way  through  a  jungle  of  scattered  clothes 
and  overturned  chairs. 

"What's  happened,  Palmer?"  he  asked. 

"I  knocked  my  head  against  the  chest  of  drawers,"  was 
the  strictly  truthful  answer.  "It's  only  a  scratch." 

"Ragging,  I  suppose?  Why  were  you  out  of  bed  after 
Lights  Out?" 

Palmer  preserved  a  discreet  silence. 

"Anybody  else  been  out  of  bed?"  Loring  demanded  of 
the  twilit  room. 

"Say,  Loring,  I  guess  this  is  my  funeral,"  drawled  Q'Rane 
in  answer.  "/  opened  up  his  durned  head  for  him." 

"I  was  in  it  too,"  said  Sinclair. 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    35 

"So  was  I." 

"So  was  I." 

Loring  turned  to  Palmer.  "Put  on  a  dressing-gown  and 
go  down  to  the  matron's  room.  You  other  fellows — any- 
one who's  been  out  of  bed,  put  on  his  trousers  and  come  down 
to  my  study.  O'Rane  and  Sinclair,  you  stay  where  you 
are." 

On  the  wholesale  execution  that  followed  there  is  no  need 
to  dwell.  Castigation  in  bulk,  for  some  obscure  reason,  was 
always  known  as  a  'Regatta'  at  Melton,  and,  as  Regattas  went, 
this  was  celebrated  on  a  lavish  scale. 

"Now  I  suppose  I  shall  have  to  show  that  little  beast 
up  to  Matheson,"  said  Loring,  when  all  was  over.  "And  I 
hope  Matheson'll  give  it  to  him  tight.  Life's  not  safe  in  the 
same  house  with  him." 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  door,  and  one  of  our  late  victims 
entered  in  tweed  trousers,  felt  slippers,  and  pyjama  jacket. 
The  bitterness  of  death  was  past,  and  he  smiled  cheer- 
fully. 

"I  say,  Loring,  you  know,  it  wasn't  altogether  O'Rane's 
fault.  I  started  it." 

Loring  looked  at  the  speaker  with  cold  surprise. 

"So  far  as  I  remember,  you've  been  dealt  with." 

"Yes,  but  I  didn't  want  to  get  him  into  a  row  with  Mathe- 
son. We  were  about  ten  to  one." 

"You  seem  to  have  come  off  second-best,"  suggested  Dray- 
cott. 

"I  know.  He's  got  some  filthy  Japanese  trick.  He'd 
take  on  half  the  school  as  soon  as  look  at  them.  Palmer 
doesn't  want  a  row  on  his  account." 

Loring  meditated  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  "Well, 
you  go  off  to  bed  now,  Venables,"  he  said.  "And  when  you 
get  there,  stay  there.  Good  night." 

There  the  matter  ended  for  a  time.  After  first  Roll  Call 
next  day,  Palmer  embarked  on  a  long  and  patient  explanation 
of  his  bandaged  head.  He  had  been  walking  quietly  down  the 
middle  of  the  dormitory  when  he  caught  his  foot  in  the  cord 
of  someone  else's  dressing-gown.  Pitching  forward  and  try- 


36  SONIA 

ing  to  recover  his  balance  .   .    .  Matheson  shook  an  uncom- 
prehending head  and  hurried  away  to  Chapel. 

Public  opinion  in  Hall  rose  tempestuously  within  measur- 
able distance  of  assassination  point. 


rv 

The  morow  of  the  Regatta  was  a  Sunday.  I  spent  the 
morning  dutifully  writing  to  my  mother  in  Ireland  and  in  the 
afternoon  suggested  to  Loring  that  if  he  wished  to  preserve 
his  figure  he  had  better  come  for  a  walk  with  me.  The  bait 
was  taken.  He  had  a  horror  of  becoming  fat,  and,  though  in 
fact  no  heavier  than  was  to  be  expected  of  a  man  with  his 
frame,  could  usually  be  roused  from  his  Sunday  occupation 
of  pasting  book-plates  into  large-paper  editions-de-luxe  by  a 
hint  that  his  weight  was  rising  visibly. 

We  crossed  Great  Court,  span  a  coin  at  Big  Gateway  and 
chose  the  Forest  road  in  the  direction  of  Crowley.  As  bounds 
— for  all  but  monitors — ended  at  the  far  side  of  the  cricket 
ground,  we  anticipated  an  uninterrupted  walk.  It  was  a  mild 
afternoon  for  the  end  of  October,  and  we  went  at  an  easy 
pace  through  the  town  and  into  the  half-mile  belt  of  trees 
that  screened  Melton  from  the  south-west  wind  and  marked 
the  beginning  of  the  long  hill  which  sloped  down  and  down 
past  Crowley  Court  and  Bishop's  Cross  to  Southampton.  Mr. 
Gladstone  had  died  in  the  May  of  that  year,  and  Loring,  fresh 
from  some  hasty,  ill-written  memoir,  was  full  of  the  dream 
once  dreamt  by  the  youthful  Gladstone  in  the  shadow  of  St. 
Peter's,  that  the  world  might  one  day  see  again  the  union  of 
all  Christian  Churches.  The  traditional  and  picturesque  had 
captured  his  imagination  as  they  were  to  capture  it  throughout 
life.  He  re-created  the  dream  with  rare  enthusiasm  until 
we  were  brought  to  a  standstill  on  the  farther  fringe  of 
Swanley  Forest. 

Anyone  who  is  familiar  with  the  neighbourhood  of  Melton 
knows  that  the  Southampton  road  takes  a  sharp  turn  to  the 
right  at  the  second  milestone  on  leaving  the  Forest.  We  had 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    37 

pushed  our  way  through  the  fallen  leaves  and  rounded  the 
bend,  when  I  noticed  a  figure  seated  on  the  milestone.  The 
back  was  turned  to  us,  and  the  head  was  bowed  as  though  in 
sleep. 

Loring  paused  to  inhale  the  sweet,  heavy  air  of  the  pine 
woods. 

"Humpty  Dumpty  will  have  a  great  fall,"  he  remarked, 
"if  he  goes  to  sleep  on  milestones." 

"It's  somebody  from  the  school,"  I  said. 

On  the  ground  by  the  side  of  the  stone  lay  a  straw  hat  such 
as — for  no  conceivable  reason — we  were  compelled  to  wear 
in  all  weathers.  Loring  moved  forward  and  then  stopped 
suddenly. 

"Oh,  my  Lord !"  he  exclaimed.  "As  if  we  hadn't  thrashed 
the  fellow  till  we  were  tired  of  it !" 

I  took  a  second  look.  The  back  was  bowed  till  the  shoulder- 
blades  stood  out  in  two  sharp  points,  the  chin  rested  on  the 
knees  and  two  thin  hands  were  clasped  round  two  thinner 
ankles.  The  attitude  was  unmistakable,  even  if  I  had  not 
recognized  the  silky  black  hair  floating  back  from  the  forehead 
as  the  wind  blew  softly  inland  from  the  sea.  We  walked  on 
and  stopped  beside  him;  his  eyes  were  gazing  far  out  over 
the  distant  Channel,  and  he  failed  to  observe  our  approach. 

"A  good  view,"  said  Loring. 

"She's  a  Royal  Mail  boat.  Lisbon,  Gib.,  Teneriffe,  B.A., 
Rio."  I  could  hardly  see  the  ship,  but  a  wreathing  spiral  of 
smoke,  mingling  with  the  low  clouds,  gave  me  her  position. 
"There's  been  a  home-bound  Orient,  and  two  P.  and  O.'s, 
and  a  D.OA.,  oh,  and  one  British  India.  Two  a  minute,  and 
steaming,  steaming  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth." 

He  spoke  in  a  dreamy,  sing-song  voice,  and  his  soul  was 
five  thousand  miles  from  Melton. 

"Is  this  a  usual  pitch  of  yours  ?"  Loring  asked. 

"It  is.  When  a  man  wants  to  think  and  be  alone  with 
no  one  but  his  own  self  by  .  .  .  There's  days  you  can  smell 
the  sea,  and  days  when  the  air's  so  clean  and  clear  you  could 
put  out  your  hand  and  touch  one  of  the  little  ships  ..."  His 
voice  sank  almost  to  a  whisper,  ".  .  .to  show  the  love  you 


38  SONIA 

have  for  her,  and  the  lonely,  cold  sea  she's  ploughing  up  into 
white  foam." 

Loring  looked  at  me  in  amazement  and  shook  his  head 
helplessly.  To  him,  who  had  at  that  time  never  set  foot  in 
Ireland,  the  soft  and  unexpected  Irish  intonation  of  O'Rane's 
voice  conveyed  nothing ;  he  was  as  yet  unacquainted  with  the 
Celtic  luxuriance  of  misery. 

"O'Rane!"  I  said. 

His  head  turned  slowly,  and,  as  his  eyes  met  ours,  their 
expression  was  transformed.  Dreaminess  and  melancholy 
rushed  out  of  him  as  his  spirit  returned  from  afar ;  in  less  than 
a  second  he  was  English  again — with  occasional  lapses  into 
the  cadence  and  phraseology  of  America. 

"Guess  I'm  up  against  another  of  your  everlasting  rules, 
Loring,"  he  said. 

"The  rules  aren't  mine,"  Loring  returned  pleasantly.  "I 
found  'em  here — five  years  ago.  I  only  have  to  see  they're 
kept." 

"And,  if  I  try  to  break  them,  you'll  try  to  break  me  ?  Do 
you  think  you'll  succeed  ?"  he  demanded  defiantly. 

Loring  laughed,  and  by  the  narrowing  of  O'Rane's  eyes 
I  could  see  he  did  not  relish  laughter  at  his  own  expense. 

"I've  never  given  the  matter  a  thought." 

"In  ten — in  eight  days'  time  you'll  thrash  me  for  walking 
two  miles  through  Swanley  Forest?" 

"No — for  breaking  bounds.  If  I  do  thrash  you.  Frankly, 
I'm  getting  rather  sick  of  it.  Probably  you  are  too.  I'm 
going  to  suggest  that  you  should  accompany  Oakleigh  and  me 
back  to  school;  you're  not  breaking  bounds  if  you're  with 
us." 

O'Rane  looked  at  him  for  a  moment,  and  his  lip  curled. 

"Mediaevalism  tempered  by  Jesuitism." 

Loring  smiled  good-humouredly.  "Not  very  gracious,  is 
it?  And  we  probably  shan't  agree  over  Jesuits." 

O'Rane,  to  his  credit,  blushed. 

"I  apologize.    I  forgot  you  were  a  .  .  . " 

Loring  waved  away  the  apology. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  said.    "But  why  come  to  the  oldest 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    39 

school  in  England  if  you  object  to  mediaevalism ?  Possibly 
you  weren't  consulted,  but,  as  you  are  here,  why  not  take 
the  place  as  you  find  it,  or  else  clear  out?" 

O'Rane's  grip  tightened  on  his  ankles. 

"I  shall  stay  here  till  I'm  ready  for  Oxford  and  I  shall 
stay  at  Oxford  till  I've  got  everything  this  country  can  give 
me.  Guess  I've  knocked  about  a  bit  in  my  time  and  some- 
how I  was  always  on  the  underneath  side.  Greasy  Levantines, 
Chinese  storekeepers,  American-German-Jews.  I'm  a  bit 
tired  of  it.  I  want  to  get  on  top.  I've  seen  Englishmen  in 
most  parts  of  the  world — mostly  on  top — I'm  going  to  join 
'em,  and  get  some  of  my  own  back  grinding  other  people's 
faces." 

Loring  looked  at  his  watch. 

"If  you  don't  want  to  be  late  for  Chapel,  it's  time  we 
started  back.  Look  here,  grinding  other  people's  faces  is  a 
laudable  ambition  so  far  as  it  goes,  but  it's  rather  remote. 
How  old  are  you?  Fifteen?  Well,  you've  got  another 
three  years  here,  and  you  can  spend  'em  in  one  of  two  ways. 
We  can  go  on  thrashing  you  this  term  at  the  rate  of  once  in 
ten  days ;  then  you'll  get  into  the  Sixth,  there  won't  be  many 
rules  to  break,  and,  if  you  break  'em,  Burgess'll  sack  you. 
That  apart,  you  can  go  on  living  your  present  life,  without  a 
friend  in  the  school,  taking  no  share  in  the  school,  no  use  to 
man  or  beast.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  you  can  make  the  best 
of  a  bad  job  and  live  on  decent  terms  with  your  neigh- 
bours, I  make  no  suggestion.  I  only  ask  if  there's  any 
particular  point  in  regarding  everyone  as  your  natural 
enemy  ?" 

We  walked  for  a  hundred  yards  or  so  in  silence.  Then 
O'Rane  said : 

"It  doesn't  occur  to  you  that  every  man  is  the  natural 
enemy  of  every  other  man?" 

Loring  flicked  a  stone  out  of  the  road  with  the  point  of  'his 
stick. 

"Because  it  isn't  true,"  he  said. 

"When  there  are  two  men  and  only  food  for  one?  You'd 
fight  me  to  the  death  for  that  one  loaf." 


40  SONIA 

"In  practice,  yes.  Theoretically,  I  should  halve  it  with 
you.  That's  the  sort  of  public-school  idea." 

"And  it  doesn't  square  with  the  practice.  I'm  out  for 
the  loaves  before  someone  else  gets  them." 

"Always  assuming  he  isn't  stronger  than  you,"  said 
Loring. 

"Then  I'll  try  and  make  myself  stronger  than  him." 

"And  the  end  of  the  world  will  come  when  the  strongest 
man  has  starved  everyone  else.  A  happy  world,  O'Rane,  a 
happy  end  to  it,  and  a  glorious  use  of  physical  strength." 

"That's  been  the  world's  rule  so  far." 

"Utter  bunkum!"  Loring  stopped  and  faced  his  antago- 
nist. We  had  reached  the  cricket  ground  and  the  beginning 
of  bounds,  so  that  O'Rane  no  longer  needed  a  convoy.  "For 
the  first  years  of  your  life  you  were  so  weak  that  it  took 
one  woman  to  feed  you  and  another  to  put  your  clothes  on 
so  that  you  shouldn't  die  of  exposure.  On  your  theory  there 
wouldn't  be  a  woman  left  alive,  far  less  a  child.  You  must 
find  some  other  answer  to  the  riddle  of  existence.  You 
can't  do  much  with  all-round  hate  and  promiscuous  throat- 
cutting." 

"If  someone  takes  a  knife  to  me,  I'll  try  to  get  in  first 
blow,"  O'Rane  persisted  obstinately. 

"Well,  that's  a  slight  improvement  on  knifing  at  sight. 
The  next  discovery  for  you  to  make  is  that  your  neighbours 
don't  all  want  to  trample  on  you." 

O'Rane's  eyes  fired  with  sudden,  vengeful  passion. 

"Guess  you  were  born  on  top,  Loring." 

"Yes,  I've  had  a  very  easy  time."  He  swung  his  stick 
thoughtfully  and  looked  up  the  hill  at  the  school  buildings 
aglow  in  the  light  of  the  setting  sun.  "But  it  hasn't  made 
me  want  to  walk  on  other  people's  faces.  You  see,  one  day 
the  positions  might  be  reversed,  so  why  make  enemies?  Be- 
sides, there's  enough  misery  in  the  world  without  adding  to 
it  unnecessarily.  If  I  had  any  energy  to  spare,  I  might 
even  try  to  reduce  it.  Overhaul  your  philosophy  a  bit, 
O'Rane."  A  child,  bowling  a  hoop,  ran  down  the  road  and 
narrowly  avoided  treading  on  my  toes.  Loring  pressed  the 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    41 

incident  into  service.  "On  your  showing,  Oakleigh  ought  to 
have  brained  that  kid,  instead  of  which  he  moved  politely  out 
of  the  way.  The  strong  yielding  to  the  weak.  Think  it 
over,  and  you'll  find  life  isn't  a  bit  clear  cut.  It's  full  of  in- 
consistencies and  oppositions  and  compromises;  we  do  things 
for  the  most  illogical  reasons.  Well,  you're  back  in  bounds, 
and,  if  you  like  to  stay,  you  can,  and,  if  you  prefer  to  go  on 
by  yourself,  we  shan't  be  offended.  You're  going  on?  All 
right;  good-bye." 

As  O'Rane  strode  away  in  the  twilight  I  complimented 
Loring  on  his  discourse. 

"The  heavy  father,"  he  muttered.  "And  a  fat  lot  of  good 
it's  done.  You  know,  that  fellow's  three  parts  mad.  What 
were  his  people  thinking  about,  sending  him  here?" 

"I  don't  think  he's  got  any,"  I  said. 

Loring  linked  arms  with  me,  and  we  returned  to  the  school 
without  the  exchange  of  a  word.  As  we  entered  Big  Gate- 
way, he  observed : 

"He  must  have  been  pretty  well  hammered  by  someone 
to  get  into  this  state." 

And  half-way  across  Great  Court  I  heard  him  murmur : 

"Lonely  little  devil." 


Three  days  later  came  the  second  Leave-out  Day  of  term. 
Loring  and  I  had  been  invited  over  to  Crowley  Court,  and 
after  Roll  Call  we  changed  our  clothes  and  assembled  outside 
Burgess's  house  to  await  the  racing  omnibus  that  Dainton 
was  bringing  to  meet  us. 

"Are  we  all  here?"  Tom  asked,  as  his  father  came  in 
sight,  walking  the  horses  slowly  up  the  hill. 

"O'Rane's  not  coming,"  Sam  answered.  "He  hasn't 
finished  his  'Shelton'  yet." 

"All  aboard  then." 

We  drove  away  through  the  Forest  belt,  made  a  large 
luncheon  at  Crowley  Court,  spent  the  afternoon  engaged  in  a 
sanguinary  ratting  expedition  round  Dainton's  farm  build- 
ings and  returned  to  Melton  in  time  for  house  prayers.  When 


42  SONIA 

we  left  in  the  morning,  Sinclair  and  O'Ranc  had  been  seated 
at  opposite  ends  of  Hall,  employed  respectively  on  overdue 
impositions  and  a  prize  copy  of  verses.  On  our  way  back 
we  passed  them  walking  arm  in  arm  up  the  hill  to  Big  Gate- 
way and  found  them,  later  in  the  evening,  sharing  the  same 
form  in  front  of  the  fire  and  talking  in  apparent  peace. 

"The  age  of  miracles  is  not  yet  past,"  I  said  to  Loring, 
as  I  went  in  to  prayers. 

"O'Rane  told  me  they'd  made  it  up,"  he  answered,  "when 
he  came  in  to  take  my  boots  down." 

A  term  or  two  later  I  heard  the  story  of  the  reconciliation. 
As  the  last  of  us  left  the  house  for  Leave  Out,  O'Rane  picked 
up  his  papers,  flung  them  into  his  locker  and  crossed  to  Sin- 
clair's end  of  Hall. 

"May  I  speak  to  you  a  moment?"  he  asked. 

"It's  a  free  country,"  was  the  uncompromising  answer. 

"Well,  I  guess  there's  a  certain  amount  of  unfriendliness 
between  us.  Is  there  any  use  in  keeping  it  up?" 

Sinclair  looked  at  him  in  some  surprise,  then  returned  to 
his  writing. 

O'Rane  sat  down  on  the  table,  and  Sinclair  ostentatiously 
gathered  up  his  books  and  retired  to  a  window-seat  where 
there  was  only  room  for  one.  "I'm  quite  happy  as  I  am," 
he  said. 

"See  here,"  said  O'Rane,  without  attempting  to  follow 
him,  "it's  going  to  be  a  bit  awkward  if  we  live  three  years 
in  the  same  house  without  speaking." 

"Don't  worry  about  me,"  Sinclair  answered,  without  look- 
ing up.  "I  shan't  be  here  three  years." 

"Well,  two,  if  you're  so  blamed  particular." 

"Or  two  either.  They'll  fire  me  out  at  the  end  of  this 
term." 

O'Rane  jumped  down  from  the  table  and  walked  to  the 
window  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets. 

"What  the  deuce  for?"  he  demanded. 

"Super-ed  of  course,  you  fool." 

Softly  whistling,  O'Rane  picked  up  the  first  half-finished 
imposition. 


"Won't  you  get  your  remove  ?"  he  asked. 

"Not  an  earthly.    /  can't  do  their  dam'  stuff." 

"You  can  do  this  thing:  A  train  going  forty  miles  an 
hour  .  .  ." 

Sinclair  flamed  with  sudden  anger. 

"Oh,  do,  for  God's  sake,  go  away  and  leave  me  in  peace," 
he  cried.  "I  dare  say  it's  all  very  easy  for  people  like 
you  ..." 

"But  I'll  show  you  how  to  do  it." 

"I  don't  want  to  be  shown.  If  I've  been  shown  once  I've 
been  shown  a  million  times.  It's  no  good!  Bracebridge  says, 
'D'you  follow  that?'  and  I  say,  'Yes,'  and  all  the  time  I've 
not  the  foggiest  conception  what  he's  driving  at." 

Taking  the  pen  from  the  other's  hand  O'Rane  wrote  down 
three  lines  of  figures  and  handed  Sinclair  the  answer. 

"And  what  good  d'you  think  that  is?" 

"I  just  think  that  this  is  a  poorish  way  of  spending  a 
Leave-out  Day,"  O'Rane  answered.  "If  you  finish  the  things 
off  .  .  ." 

"It's  all  right,  my  leave's  stopped." 

O'Rane  propped  Sinclair's  book  against  the  window-ledge 
and  began  writing.  Outside  the  sun  was  shining  in  the 
deserted  Great  Court,  and  a  southerly  breeze  caught  up  the 
fallen  creeper  leaves  and  blew  them  with  a  dry  rustle  across 
the  grey  flagstones. 

"That's  no  reason  for  wasting  all  day  over  muck  of  this 
kind,"  he  remarked.  "One  pipe  letting  water  into  a  cistern 
at  the  rate  of  ten  gallons  a  minute,  and  another  pipe  letting 
it  out.  ...  If  you  make  up  your  mind  to  get  a  remove,  guess 
nothing'll  stop  you.  That's  the  way  I  regard  the  proposition. 
If  you  make  up  your  mind  to  do  any  dam'  thing  in  this 
world.  .  .  .  Turn  up  the  answers  and  see  if  I've  got  it  right. 
Our  old  friend  the  clock:  when  will  the  hands  next  be  at 
right  angles?  Echo  answers  'When?'  I  wonder  if  any- 
body finds  the  slightest  use  for  all  this  bilge  when  once  he's 
quit  school.  Turn  up  the  answers.  He's  fixed.  How  many 
more  have  you  got  to  do?" 

"Four," 


44  SONIA 

"Anything  else?" 

"An  abstract  of  three  chapters  of  Div."  Sinclair  had 
almost  forgotten  the  quarrel  and  the  enormity  of  O'Rane's 
"Side,"  and  was  looking  with  surprised  admiration  at  the 
quickly  moving  pen. 

"We'll  do  that  this  afternoon.  I'll  give  tongue,  and  you 
can  write  it  down.  See  here,  surely  if  you  can  make  old  man 
Bracebridge  give  you — or  us — decent  marks  every  day  for 
prep.  ..." 

"That  won't  help  in  the  exams." 

O'Rane  worked  three  more  problems  in  silence;  then  he 
said: 

"We  must  fix  the  exams,  somehow.  I  don't  see  it  yet, 
but  it  can  be  done.  We'll  circumvent  Bracebridge.  And  the 
answer  is  one  ton,  three  hundredweights,  no  quarters,  eleven 
pounds,  twelve  ounces."  He  threw  down  his  pen  and  rose 
with  a  yawn.  "Come  for  a  walk;  it's  only  eleven." 

Sinclair  felt  that  some  expression  of  thanks  was  due  from 
him.  It  was  not  easy  to  frame  it,  and  he  was  still  half- 
consciously  resentful  of  O'Rane's  unasked  interference. 

"Aren't  you  taking  Leave?"  he  growled.  , 

"No." 

"I  thought  you  were  going  home  with  young  Dainton." 

"I  cried  off." 

A  ray  of  light  struggled  fitfully  through  the  clouds  of 
Sinclair's  brain. 

"Did  you  stay  here  just  to  ass  about  with  this  filth?" 
he  demanded,  rather  red  in  the  face,  pointing  contemptuously 
to  the  pile  of  impositions. 

"Well,  as  I  was  doing  nothing  ..." 

"Rot !    Did  you  or  did  you  not?" 

"Yes;  I  did." 

Sinclair  meditated  in  an  embarrassed  silence ;  then  he  held 
out  his  hand. 

"You  know,  Spitfire,  you're  not  half  such  a  swine  as  I 
thought,"  he  admitted  handsomely. 

"Go  and  get  your  hat,"  O'Rane  ordered.  "I'll  wait  for 
you  on  Little  End." 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    45. 

They  walked  in  Swanley  Forest  till  luncheon,  returned 
to  Matheson's  for  a  hurried  meal,  and  set  out  again  along  the 
favourite,  forbidden  Southampton  road.  As  we  returned  from 
Crowley  Court,  we  passed  them  between  the  cricket  ground 
and  Big  Gateway,  trudging  with  arms  linked,  tired  and 
happy.  At  the  porter's  lodge  O'Rane  darted  aside  to  inspect 
the  notice-board. 

"I  wanted  to  see  when  the  Shelton's  had  to  be  sent  in," 
he  explained. 

"Are  you  going  in  for  it  ?" 

"I  don't  know.  They've  got  to  reach  Burgess  to-morrow. 
Come  back  to  Matheson's  and  finish  the  Div." 

In  the  still  deserted  Hall  Sinclair  sat,  pen  in  hand,  while 
O'Rane  rapidly  turned  the  pages  of  an  Old  Testament  history 
and  dictated  an  irreligious  abstract.  As  each  sheet  was 
finished,  it  was  blotted  and  placed  on  one  side.  Once  O'Rane 
exhibited  some  modest  sleight  of  hand.  Sinclair  had  written 
his  name  at  the  top  of  a  fresh  piece  of  paper,  and  before  any- 
thing could  be  added  O'Rane  begged  him  to  poke  the  fire. 
On  his  return  to  the  table  the  sheet  had  disappeared. 

Late  that  night,  when  Leave  was  over,  and  Hall  resounded 
with  the  voices  of  elegant  young  men  in  brown  boots,  coloured 
waistcoats  and  other  unacademic  costume,  O'Rane  descended 
with  inkpot  and  pen  to  the  changing-room.  Seating  himself  on 
an  upturned  boot-basket,  he  produced  from  one  pocket  the 
foolscap  sheet  with  Sinclair's  name  at  the  head,  from  another 
an  incredibly  neat  fair-copy  of  a  set  of  Greek  Alcaics.  Work- 
ing quickly  and  in  a  bad  light  he  produced  a  far  from  tidy 
version,  with  sloping  lines,  sprawling  characters  and  not  in- 
frequent blots.  As  the  prayer-bell  began  to  ring  he  endorsed 
an  envelope  with  the  words,  "Shelton  Greek  Verse  Prize: 
The  Rev.  A.  A.  Burgess,  Litt.D.,"  and  dropped  it  into  the 
house  letter-box. 

A  week  later  the  results  were  announced  in  Great  School. 
We  were  assembled  for  prayers  when  Burgess  walked  down 
between  the  rows  of  chairs,  mounted  the  dais  and  paused  by 
the  Birch  Table.  In  his  hand  was  the  Honour  Book,  in  which 
were  entered  the  names  of  all  prize-winners  together  with  the 


46  SONIA 

subject  set  and  the  winning  composition.  Leaving  the  book 
on  the  table,  he  unslung  his  gown  from  his  shoulder,  pulled 
it  over  his  cassock  and  sank  into  the  great  carved  chair  of 
Ockley  in  the  middle  of  the  Monitorial  Council,  facing  the 
school. 

Sutcliffe,  the  captain,  seated  on  his  right,  inquired  if  the 
Shelton  Compositions  had  been  judged. 


"Aequam  memento  rebus  in  arduis 
Servare  mentem," 


Burgess  answered.    "Thou  art  not  the  man,  laddie." 
"Is  it  Loring?"  I  asked  from  the  other  side. 
"The  prize  has  not  gone  to  my  illustrious  Sixth." 
"O'Rane,"  Loring  murmured,  looking  down  the  school. 
"Neither  to  the  less  illustrious  Under  Sixth,"  said  Bur- 
gess.   He  arose  and  strode  to  the  Birch  Table.    "The  result 
of  the  Shelton  Greek  Verse  Prize  is  as  follows :  First,  Sinclair. 
Proxime    accesserunt    Sutcliffe    and    Loring.     There    were 
twenty-three   entries.     I   believe   this   is   the   first   time   the 
prize  has  been  won  by  a  member  of  the  Remove.     Sinclair 
will  stay  behind  after  prayers." 

He  stalked  back  to  his  seat,  and  the  school,  after  a  mo- 
ment's perplexed  hesitation,  broke  into  tumultuous  applause. 
As  the  name  was  given  out  I  heard  a  whispered,  "Who? 
Sinclair?  Rot!"  Yet  there  was  no  one  else  of  that  name 
in  the  school.  Bracebridge  spun  round  in  his  chair  to  gaze 
at  his  astonishing  pupil,  and  I  could  see  Sinclair,  scarlet  of 
face,  half-rising  from  his  seat,  when  Burgess  threw  his  cassock 
on  to  the  floor  and  intoned  the  "Oremus." 

There  was  little  reverence  in  that  day's  prayers.  As 
monitor  of  the  week  I  knelt  in  front  of  the  Birch  Table  and 
out  of  the  corner  of  my  eye  could  see  the  Fourth  patting 
Sinclair  surreptitiously  on  the  back  and  the  Shell  turning 
round  with  admiring  grimaces.  Burgess  alone  seemed  un- 
surprised. "In  nomine  Patris,  et  Filii  et  Spiritus  Sancti," 
he  intoned  as  I  finished  reading  prayers.  "Ire  licet"  he 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    47 

called  out,  as  I  returned  to  his  side.  The  lower  forms  filed  out, 
till  the  whole  of  Great  School  below  the  dais  was  empty,  and 
Sinclair  stood  blushing  by  the  Birch  Table.  Burgess  opened 
the  Honour  Book  and  ran  quickly  through  the  back  pages  for 
two  years. 

"This  is  the  first  school  prize  thou  hast  won,  laddie?" 
he  demanded.  "Let  it  not  be  the  last.  Come  hither,  and  on 
the  tablets  of  thy  mind  record  these  my  words.  Here  thou 
writest  thy  name,  and  here  the  date,  and  here  the  English 
and  here  thy  polished  Greek.  In  a  fair,  round  hand,  laddie." 

He  closed  the  book  with  a  snap  and  struggled  out  of  his 
gown. 

"I'm  .  .  .  I'm  afraid  there's  a  mistake,  sir,"  Sinclair 
stammered. 

"It  is  as  thou  sayest.  A  proparoxyton  in  the  third  line 
where  an  oxyton  should  have  been.  I  am  an  old  man,  broken 
with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  this  life,  but  it  may  be  thou 
wilt  live  to  see  a  murrain  upon  the  land,  destroying  the 
Scribes  of  Oxford  and  the  Pharisees  of  Cambridge,  and  on  that 
day  the  last  Greek  accent  will  be  flung  headlong  into  the  Pit. 
Till  that  day  come,  thou  shalt  continue  to  pay  thy  tithe  of 
mint  and  dill  and  cummin  to  the  monks  of  Alexandria." 

Sinclair  stared  at  him  in  piteous  bewilderment. 

"But  I  never  wrote  those  lines,  sir,"  he  protested. 

"Small  were  thine  honour,  laddie,  if  thou  hadst."  He 
glanced  at  the  topmost  of  the  pile  of  compositions.  "Of  the 
making  of  blots  there  is  no  end.  Wherefore  I  said,  'in  thy 
fairest,  roundest  hand.' " 

He  rose  to  his  feet  and  walked  down  school,  while  the 
rest  of  us  followed  a  few  paces  behind.  Sinclair  made  one 
last  attempt. 

"Sir,  I  don't  know  what  an  Alcaic  is !" 

Burgess  laid  a  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"When  the  sun  of  yestere'en  sank  to  rest,  laddie,  I  sat 
in  judgement  on  these  verses.  And  when  he  rose  in  the  east 
this  morning,  lo!  I  laboured  still  at  my  task.  Peradventure 
thou  didst  write  them  in  thy  sleep.  Peradventure  as  in  the 
book  of  Trilby' — nay,  laddie,  start  not!  it  is  no  play  of 


48  SONIA 

Sophocles.  But  why  vex  the  soul  with  idle  questionings? 
Should  thy  feet  bear  thee  to  the  Common  Room,  laddie,  I  pray 
thee  ask  Mr.  Bracebridge  to  commune  with  me  in  my  house. 
Mine  eyes  are  dim,  yet  I  descry  a  young  man  by  the  steps  of 
the  Temple.  Thou  sayest  it  is  the  young  O'Rane?  Bid  him 
to  me,  an  he  be  not  taken  up  with  higher  thoughts.  Good 
night,  laddies!" 

With  an  answering  'good  night'  we  dispersed  to  our  houses 
and  left  him  to  walk  across  Great  Court  with  O'Rane. 

"In  the  third  line,  laddie,"  I  heard  him  beginning,  "a 
proparoxyton  where  an  oxyton  should  have  been." 

O'Rane  looked  up,  unabashed,  but  with  generous  ad- 
miration. 

"Didn't  I  make  it  oxyton,  sir?"  he  asked. 

"Thou  didst  not.  And  wherefore  didst  thou  counterfeit 
the  image  and  superscription  of  Sinclair?" 

O'Rane  hesitated  discreetly,  but,  as  Burgess  too  was  silent, 
he  elected  to  embark  on  a  candid  explanation. 

"He  wrote  his  name,  sir,  and  then  I  bagged  the  paper  ..." 

"  'Bagged,'  laddie  ?    What  strange  tongue  is  this  ?" 

"Stole,  sir.  I  stole  the  paper  and  wrote  the  verses  under- 
neath. He  doesn't  know  anything  about  it." 

"Yet  wherefore?" 

O'Rane  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"It  seemed  such  rot — so  hard  on  him,  sir,  to  be  super-ed 
just  because  he  can't  get  his  remove." 

Burgess  smoothed  his  beard  and  looked  at  O'Rane  with 
tired,  expressionless  eyes. 

"But  the  marks  for  the  Shelton  Prize  are  not  taken  into 
account  in  awarding  removes,"  he  said. 

"No,  sir,  but  you  yourself  said  he  was  the  first  fellow  to 
win  the  prize  out  of  the  Remove.  It'll  be  jolly  hard  to  super 
him  after  that." 

They  had  crossed  Great  Court  and  were  standing  at  the 
door  of  the  Head's  house. 

"And  thine  own  day  of  reckoning,  David  O'Rane  ?  Where- 
of shall  that  be  ?" 

made  no  answer  for  some  moments ;  then  in  a 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    49 

tone  from  which  he  strove  in  vain  to  banish  the  note  of  dis- 
appointment : 

"I've  lost  the  prize,  sir,  anyway." 

"Thou  wilt  yet  be  young  when  the  season  returns  to  us 
again.  But  thou  hast  made  of  me  a  mockery  and  a  scorn  in 
the  market-place.  An  thou  trip  a  second  time,  this  place  will 
know  thee  no  more.  Good-night,  laddie." 

"Good-night,  sir,  and  thank  you,  sir."  He  lingered  for  a 
moment.  "Sir  ..." 

"Go  thy  ways  in  peace,  David  O'Rane." 

"Sir,  how  did  you  know  it  was  I  ?" 

"Me,  laddie,  me.  For  thirty  lean  years  have  I  wrestled 
with  the  tyranny  of  Miles  Coverdale.  Laddie,  I  am  old  and 
broken,  but  whensoever  thou  hast  stripes  laid  upon  thee  for 
contumacy,  whensoever  thou  breakest  bounds  or  breakest 
heads,  whensoever  thou  blasphemest  in  Pentecostal  tongues, 
be  assured  that  the  Unsleeping  Eye  watcheth  thee.  And  now 
Mr.  Bracebridge  would  have  speech  of  me." 

O'Rane  turned  away,  and  Burgess  addressed  the  newcomer. 

"I'm  starting  an  Army  Class  this  term,"  he  said.  "I  shall 
take  Sinclair  from  your  form." 

"I  didn't  know  he  was  thinking  of  the  Army,"  answered 
Bracebridge. 

Burgess  fitted  his  latch-key  into  the  door. 

"The  Lord  will  provide,"  he  observed  mournfully. 

VI 

The  episode  of  the  Shelton  Greek  Verse  Prize  marked 
a  turning-point  in  O'Rane's  early  career  at  Melton  and  re- 
vealed to  me  for  the  first  time  his  resourcefulness  and  con- 
centrated determination  no  less  than  his  innate  and  un- 
conscious love  of  the  dramatic.  The  story  was  all  over  the 
house  that  evening  and  was  to  spread  throughout  the  school 
next  day.  Ishmael  found  himself  of  a  sudden  venerated  and 
courted,  and  to  do  him  justice  he  was  far  too  young  and 
human  to  remain  uninfluenced.  "Spitfire"  dropped  into  des- 
uetude as  a  nickname  and  was  replaced  by  "Raney";  there 
were  no  more  concerted  "raggings"  or  resultant  cut  heads, 


50  SONIA 

and  the  former  eccentricities  of  an  outsider  became  the 
caprices  of  a  hero.  In  a  night  and  a  morning  O'Rane  became 
a  political  leader. 

The  change  was  effected  with  little  or  no  sacrifice  of 
principle.  He  still  came  up  for  judgement  before  us  once 
every  ten  days  and  was  formally  and  efficiently  chastised 
until  the  end  of  term,  when  he  received  his  remove  into  the 
Sixth.  The  flow  of  his  criticism  was  unchecked,  but  no 
longer  so  bitterly  resented.  With  a  little  assistance  from 
Sinclair  and  Mayhew,  his  social  qualities  were  brought  into 
play:  we  would  hear  his  voice  leading  an  unlawful  sing-song 
in  Middle  Dormitory,  occasionally  he  contributed  to  Mayhew's 
manuscript  "Junior  Mathesonian,"  and  an  echo  of  wild  stories 
came  to  us  with  all  the  violence  and  bloodshed  of  the  late 
Graeco-Turkish  War,  to  be  followed  by  anecdotes  of  life  in 
the  Straits  Settlements  and  Bret  Harte  tales  of  the  Farther 
West.  No  one  believed  a  half  of  what  he  said,  but  the  stories 
— as  stories — were  good.  His  personality  developed  and  lent 
weight  to  his  opinions  and  criticism ;  he  grew  gradually  more 
mellow,  less  alien  in  speech  and  habit  of  mind.  His  face 
became  less  thin,  and  the  practice  of  promiscuous  expectora- 
tion left  him.  * 

I  was  to  have  ocular  proof  of  his  new  ascendancy  before 
the  end  of  the  term.  The  evening  of  the  last  Saturday  I  was 
condemned  to  spend  in  Hall.  There  was  a  high,  three- 
panelled  board  over  the  fireplace,  carved  with  the  names  of 
monitors  and  members  of  either  Eleven,  and,  as  I  was  at  that 
time  credited  with  some  facility  in  the  use  of  a  chisel,  the 
unanimous  vote  of  my  fellows  entrusted  me  with  the  arduous 
task  of  bringing  the  jealously  guarded  record  up  to  date. 
Planting  a  chair  in  the  fireplace,  to  the  enduring  mortification 
of  a  chestnut-roasting  party,  I  settled  to  my  work.  The 
fags  gradually  resumed  their  interrupted  occupations,  and  in 
the  intervals  of  hammering  I  caught  fragments  of  triangular 
conversation. 

"I  say,  Raney,"  Palmer  began,  "is  it  true  you're  coming 
to  watch  the  Cup  Tie  on  Tuesday?" 

O'Rane,  seated  for  purposes  of  his  own  on  the  top  of  the 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    51 

lockers,  six  feet  up  the  side  of  the  wall,  grunted  and  went  on 
reading. 

"It  isn't  compulsory,  you  know,"  Pajmer  went  on.  "You 
won't  be  thrashed  if  you  don't." 

"Silence,  canaille,"  O'Rane  murmured. 

"I  suppose  you  know  the  way  to  Little  End?  Across  the 
court  and  under  the  arch  .  .  .I'll  show  you,  if  you  like. 
The  Matheson  colours  are  blue  and  white.  The  game's  quite 
easy  to  follow.  There  are  two  goals  ..." 

O'Rane  yawned  indolently,  closed  his  book  and  threw  it 
at  the  speaker. 

"See  here,  sonny,  you'll  rupture  yourself  if  you  do  too 
much  funny-dog.  I'm  just  coming  to  your  dime-show  to 
watch  you  beach-combers  doing  your  stunt.  And  when  it's 
all  over  I  want  you  to  start  in  and  tell  me  what  good  you 
think  you've  done." 

One  or  two  voices  raised  themselves  improvingly  in  de- 
fence of  sport,  the  tradition  of  fair  play,  working  for  one's 
side  and  not  for  one's  self,  physical  fitness  and  the  like — much 
as  Loring  had  done  a  few  weeks  earlier. 

"You  bat-eared  lot !"  was  O'Rane's  withering  commentary. 

"Everyone  knows  you're  an  unpatriotic  hog,"  observed 
Venables. 

"  'Cos  I  don't  kick  a  filthy  bit  of  skin  about  in  the  slime  ? 
You  lousy,  over-fed  lap-dog,  a  fat  lot  you  know  about 
patriotism!  See  here,  Venables,  what  use  d'you  think  you 
are?  Can  you  ride?  No.  Can  you  shoot?  No.  Can  you 
row  ?  Can  you  swim  ?  Can  you  save  yourself  a  God- Almighty 
thrashing  any  time  I  care  to  foul  my  hands  on  you?" 

"If  you  fought  fair  ..."  Venables  began  indignantly. 

"I  fight  with  my  two  hands  same  as  you.  'Course,  if  you 
fool  round  with  your  everlasting  Queensberry  Rules,  don't  be 
surprised  if  I  hitch  you  out  of  your  pants  and  break  an  arm 
or  two.  And,  meantime,  you  sit  and  hand  out  gaff  about 
patriotism  and  the  fine  man  you're  growing  into  by  playing 
football.  All  the  time  you  know  you'd  be  turned  up  and 
smacked  if  you  didn't,  and  you  don't  cotton  on  to  that.  I've 
a  good  mind  to  take  you  in  hand,  Venables." 


52  SONIA 

Mayhew,  who  was  struggling  with  the  current  number  of 
his  paper,  laid  his  pen  down  and  addressed  the  meeting. 

"Proposed  that  O'Rane  do  now  shut  his  face,"  he  sug- 
gested. 

"Seconded!"  cried  Sinclair,  who  was  lying  on  his  back  in 
the  middle  window-seat,  drinking  cocoa  through  a  length  of 
rubber  tubing  stolen  from  the  laboratory. 

O'Rane  smiled  and  drummed  his  heels  against  the  echoing 
locker  doors. 

"Sinks,  come  here !"  he  commanded. 

There  was  no  movement  on  Sinclair's  part. 

"Laddie!"  O'Rane's  voice  took  on  the  very  spirit  of 
Burgess.  "I'm  an  old  man,  broken  with  the  cares  and  sor- 
rows of  this  life.  I  pray  thee  come  to  me  lest  a  worse  thing 
befall  thee.  For  and  if  thou  harden  thine  heart,  peradventure 
I  may  come  like  a  thief  in  the  night  and  evilly  entreat  thee 
so  that  thou  shalt  wash  thy  couch  with  thy  tears.  Then  shall 
thy  life  be  labour  and  sorrow." 

Unprotesting  and  under  the  eyes  of  Hall,  Sinclair  rolled 
off  the  window-seat  and  ambled  round  to  O'Rane's  corner. 

"What's  the  row?"  he  demanded. 

"I'm  going  to  make  a  man  of  Venables — make  men  of 
them  all,"  was  the  reply. 

There  was  a  whispered  consultation,  and  I  caught  "Mud- 
Crushers" — contemptuous  appellation  of  a  despised  Cadet 
Corps.  "No,  I'm  blowed  if  I  do,"  Sinclair  flung  up  to  the 
figure  on  the  lockers.  "7  will  if  you  will,"  whispered  O'Rane. 
A  moment's  hesitation  followed.  "It'll  be  rather  a  rag," 
Sinclair  admitted. 

"We'll  start  on  Palmer,"  O'Rane  pronounced.  "He's  the 
biggest.  Hither,  Palmer." 

Out  of  the  corner  of  my  eye  I  could  see  Palmer,  still  with  a 
cross  of  sticking-plaster  on  his  forehead,  look  up  from  his 
book. 

"Go  to ,"  he  began  valiantly  enough,  and  then  anti- 

climactically  as  he  caught  sight  of  me,  "What  d'you  want?" 

"Thee,  laddie.  Sinks  and  I  are  old  men,  broken  with  the 
teares  and  sorrows  of  this  life.  If  you  don't  come,  I  don't 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    -53 

mind  telling  you  you'll  get  kidney-punch  in  Dormitory  to- 
night. That's  better.  I'm  joining  the  Mud-Crushers  on 
Monday.  Sinks  is  joining  too.  He  didn't  want  to,  but  I 
threatened  him  with  kidney-punch." 

"More  fool  him,"  returned  Palmer,  preparing  to  go  back 
to  his  book. 

"Half  a  sec.,"  cried  Sinclair,  with  a  restraining  hand  on 
his  shoulder.  "Raney  and  I  are  joining  the  Mud-Crushers 
on  Monday.  If  you  don't  join  too,  and  recruit  Cottrell, 
you'll  get  kidney-punch  from  us  both." 

Palmer  looked  his  persecutors  up  and  down.  He  was  no 
coward  and  would  have  left  enduring  marks  on  Sinclair,  but 
of  O'Rane's  disabling,  Japanese  methods  no  one  had  yet 
made  beginning  or  end. 

"But  what's  the  good  of  my  mucking  about  in  a  filthy 
uniform?"  he  demanded.  "I'm  going  to  be  a  land  agent." 

"Decide.  Don't  argue,"  ordered  O'Rane.  "Think  how 
useful  a  little  rifle  practice  will  be  when  you're  invited  to 
murder  hapless  driven  birds." 

"But  it's  all  rot  ..." 

O'Rane  waved  him  away.  "If  you  will  arrange  to  be 
in  bed  at  9.45  to-night,  Sinks  and  I  will  give  ourselves  the 
pleasure  of  waiting  on  you." 

Palmer  hesitated  a  moment  longer. 

"Oh,  anything  for  a  quiet  life,"  he  exclaimed. 

"Now  go  and  recruit  Venables,"  said  O'Rane.  "Sinks 
and  I  are  old  men,  broken  with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  this 
life.  We  should  hate  to  be  dragged  into  a  vulgar  brawl,  but 
you  may  use  our  names  as  a  guarantee  of  good  faith.  I  saw 
a  man  killed  with  a  kidney-punch  out  in  Kobe  once." 

The  recruiting  was  going  briskly  forward  when  I  gathered 
up  my  mallet  and  chisel,  picked  the  chair  out  of  the  fireplace 
and  returned  to  my  study.  Early  in  life  O'Rane  had  learned 
three  lessons  in  collective  psychology:  a  sense  of  humour  is 
a  strong  ally;  fifty  sheep  follow  when  one  has  butted  a  gap 
in  a  hedge;  and  the  basis  of  democracy  is  that  all  men  are 
entitled  to  see  that  their  neighbours  suffer  equally  with 
themselves. 


54  SONIA 

After  Third  Hour  on  Monday  a  batch  of  forty-three  re- 
cruits (the  Corps  was  unfashionable  in  Matheson's)  presented 
themselves  at  the  door  of  the  Armoury  graded  according  to 
height.  I  was  passing  through  Cloisters  with  Tom  Dainton, 
and  we  heard  Sinclair's  voice  leading  the  marching  song: 


"Big  fleas  have  little  fleas  upon  their  backs  to  bite  'em!" 

The  words  aptly  described  the  internal  relationships  of 
the  Press  Gang.  The  smallest  fag  marched  under  the  suspic- 
ious eye  of  one  slightly  larger  than  himself,  the  slightly  larger 
was  in  turn  under  the  surveillance  of  a  fag  yet  larger.  There 
was  an  eleventh-hour  flicker  of  mutiny,  promptly  extinguished. 

"I'm  hanged  if  I  can  see  the  fun  of  this,"  cried  Venables, 
flinging  down  the  pen. 

Sinclair,  Palmer  and  Cottrell  had  already  signed  and  were 
with  difficulty  restrained  from  tearing  the  would-be  deserter 
limb  from  limb. 

"It's  the  damnedest  silly  rot  I  was  ever  mixed  up  with," 
he  grumbled,  as  he  signed  his  name  viciously  in  the  Recruits' 

Book.  "Nobody  but  a  congenital  idiot  like  Raney Here, 

Carlisle,  come  and  sign,  curse  you !" 

Two  days  later,  term  came  to  an  end.  My  mother  and 
sister  were  in  Cairo,  and  as  I  did  not  fancy  spending  Christmas 
by  myself  in  the  wilds  of  the  County  Kerry,  I  had  accepted 
Loring's  invitation  to  stay  with  him  in  London.  We  were 
almost  the  last  to  shake  little  Matheson's  hand  and  leave  the 
house,  for  Loring  never  cared  what  train  he  took,  so  long  as 
he  was  not  hurried.  He  was  now  lying  contentedly  back  in 
his  arm-chair,  divested  of  his  responsibilities  as  Head  of  the 
house  and  appreciatively  tasting  the  first  savour  of  the  holi- 
days. It  was  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  O'Rane  had 
just  finished  packing  the  last  box  of  books. 

"Is  there  anything  more?"  he  asked,  stretching  his  back 
and  brushing  the  dust  from  his  clothes. 

"I  think  not,  thanks.  You're  not  a  bad  fag,  young  man. 
I'm  quite  sorry  you've  got  into  the  Sixth." 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    55 

"No  more  of  our  ten-day  meetings,"  said  O'Rane. 

Loring  half -closed  his  eyes. 

"Believe 'me  or  not,"  he  said,  "I  always  regarded  those 
meetings  as  a  blot  on  our  otherwise  delectable  friendship. 
Are  you  going  home  for  the  holidays,  Spitfire?" 

"I  haven't  got  a  home,"  O'Rane  answered,  with  a  sudden 
return  of  his  old  sullenness. 

Loring  opened  his  eyes  and  bowed  apologetically. 

"Sorry.  I  didn't  know.  No  offence  meant.  What  are 
you  going  to  do  with  yourself?" 

"Oh,  I  shall  find  something  to  do." 

"Would  it  amuse  you  to  stay  with  me  any  part  of  the  time? 
Oakleigh's  coming,  in  case  you  feel  you  can't  stand  me  alone. 
I'll  take  you  to  a  Christmas  pantomime  as  a  reward  for  being  a 
good  little  fag." 

"It's  awfully  kind  of  you,  Loring."  O'Rane  hesitated  and 
grew  very  red.  "I  don't  think  I  shall  have  time,  though." 

"Not  for  one  night,  even  ?  Loring  House,  Curzon  Street, 
will  find  me  all  the  holidays." 

"I'm  afraid  I  shall  be  working." 

"Bunkum !    You've  not  got  any  work  to  do." 

"I  have." 

"What  kind?" 

The  old  expression  of  defiance  battling  with  prolonged  per- 
secution came  into  O'Rane's  black  eyes.  "If  you  must  know," 
he  said,  "I  came  here  with  enough  money  for  one  term  and  I 
must  raise  some  more.  It's  awfully  kind  of  you,  though. 
Good-bye.  I  hope  you'll  have  a  pleasant  time.  Good-bye, 
Oakleigh." 

As  the  door  closed  behind  him,  Loring  turned  to  me  with  a 
rueful  shake  of  the  head. 

"I  seem  to  have  a  genius  for  putting  my  foot  into  it  with 
him,"  he  observed. 

"It  couldn't  be  helped,"  I  said.  "He's  a  mysterious  little 
animal." 

Loring  sat  staring  into  the  fire.  At  length  he  roused  him- 
self with  the  question : 

"But  what's  he  going  to  do  with  his  little  self?    I  rather 


56  SONIA 

feel  as  if  I'd  been  what  he'd  call  a  'God- Almighty  brute'  to  him 
this  term.  I'd  no  idea  he  was  ...  I  wonder  if  the  Guv'nor 
can  do  anything  for  him." 

"I  should'nt  dare,"  I  said. 

Loring  stretched  himself  and  looked  for  his  coat  and  hat. 

"Come  along  if  we're  going  to  catch  the  4.10,"  he  said.  "I 
say,  what  a  cheerful  prospect  for  the  little  beast  to  look  for- 
ward to,  if  he  has  to  do  this  every  holiday." 

We  were  a  small  party  at  Loring  House  that  Christmas. 
The  Marquess  divided  his  time  between  London  and  Mon- 
mouthshire according  to  the  weather  and  the  possibility  of 
hunting;  Lady  Loring  departed  to  San  Remo  with  the  New 
Year;  and  Lady  Amy  arrived  spasmodically  for  a  night  and 
a  day  between  visits  to  school  friends,  sometimes  alone,  but 
once  with  my  cousin,  Violet  Hunter-Oakleigh,  with  whom  at 
this  time  Loring  was  unblushingly  in  love.  For  the  most  part 
we  had  the  great  house  to  ourselves  for  such  times  as  we  could 
spare  to  be  at  home.  And  the  arrangement  suited  all  parties. 
Though  devoted  to  his  mother  and  sister,  I  always  fancied 
there  was  a  perplexed  misunderstanding  between  Jim  and 
his  father.  I  do  not  suggest  a  want  of  affection,  but  their 
minds  were  cast  in  different  moulds,  and  I  sometimes  wonder 
if  the  Marquess,  with  his  zest  for  pleasure  and  society,  ever 
found  common  ground  with  his  serious,  detached  and  in- 
curably romantic  son.  Be  that  as  it  may,  we  had  no  time 
to  get  bored  with  our  own  society.  Loring's  passion  for  the 
theatre  dated  from  early  years,  and  if  we  went  once  we  went 
five  times  a  week  for  the  period  of  the  holidays.  The  day 
was  not  hard  to  get  through,  as  we  ran  breakfast  and  luncheon 
into  one,  rode  in  the  Park  on  fine  afternoons  and  returned 
in  time  to  drink  a  cup  of  tea,  dress,  and  dine  out  at  one 
or  other  of  Loring's  favourite  eating-houses.  Lady  Amy  ac- 
companied us  when  she  was  in  town, — a  tall,  grey-eyed,  dark- 
haired  girl  of  sixteen  she  was  then,  wonderfully  like  her  good- 
looking  brother  in  speech,  appearance  and  manner, — but  as  a 
rule  the  two  of  us  roamed  London  by  ourselves. 

Taken  all  in  all,  they  were  very  pleasant  holidays,  though 
in  the  last  seventeen  years  I  have  forgotten  nine-tenths  of 


THE  STRANGER  WITHIN  OUR  GATES    57 

what  we  did  or  where  we  went.  Our  New  Year's  Eve  party, 
however,  lingers  in  my  memory.  Lord  Loring  took  us  all 
to  supper  at  the  Empire  Hotel.  It  was  the  first  time  I  had 
been  there,  and  from  our  place  overlooking  the  river  we 
commanded  the  room.  To  this  day  I  can  recall  something 
of  the  crowded,  brilliantly  lit  scene ;  the  little  tables  with  their 
pink-shaded  lights,  the  red  uniforms  of  the  orchestra,  the 
waiters  in  their  knee-breeches  and  silk  stockings,  the  white 
shoulders  of  the  women  and  the  shimmer  of  their  diamonds. 
Party  followed  party,  till  it  seemed  as  if  the  great  room  could 
never  contain  them,  and  in  the  entrance-hall  beyond  the  stairs 
we  could  see  fresh  parties  arriving,  more  ermine  cloaks  being 
shed,  new  ranks  of  men  settling  their  waistcoats  and  straight- 
ening their  ties  as  they  approached  with  an  air  of  well-bred, 
bored  indifference,  bowing  to  friends  here  and  there  and 
working  slowly  forward  in  search  of  their  tables. 

"Not  a  bad  sight,  is  it?"  said  Lord  Loring.  "They  stage- 
manage  the  thing  very  fairly  well.  If  only  our  waiter  would 
unbend  to  take  our  orders."  He  looked  round  and  caught 
sight  of  the  manager  with  a  plan  of  the  restaurant  in  his  hand, 
allotting  tables  and  ushering  parties  through  the  narrow 
gangways. 

"I'll  catch  hold  of  this  fellow,"  said  Jim,  rising  up  and 
intercepting  the  manager.  There  was  a  moment's  conversa- 
tion, punctuated  by  deprecatory  play  of  the  hands  and  apolo- 
getic shrugging  of  the  shoulders.  "He  says  our  man  will  be 
here  in  a  minute.  A  wild  Grand  Duke  has  just  arrived  here 
from  Russia  and  lost  his  suite  on  the  way.  Apparently  our 
waiter  is  the  only  man  who  speaks  the  lingo." 

Lord  Loring  accepted  the  situation  and  began  to  describe 
the  arrangements  for  marking  the  arrival  of  midnight.  On  the 
first  stroke  of  twelve  all  lights  were  to  be  put  out;  ar  the 
last  died  away  there  would  be  a  peal  of  bells,  limelight  would 
be  thrown  on  the  entrance-hall,  and  a  sledge  drawn  by  dogs 
would  make  its  appearance  with  a  child  on  board  to  sym- 
bolize the  advent  of  the  New  Year.  ...  He  interrupted  his 
account  to  give  the  order  for  supper  to  our  waiter  who  had  at 
last  arrived. 


58  SONIA 

"Then  link  hands  for  'Auld  Lang  Syne,' "  added  Lady 
Loring. 

At  that  moment  I  received  a  disconcerting  kick  and  looked 
up  to  find  Jim  gazing  at  the  end  of  the  table  where  his  father 
was  seated.  I  followed  the  direction  of  his  eyes,  saw  the 
waiter  raise  his  head  and  take  the  wine-list,  and  as  he  did  so 
I  caught  a  glimpse  of  his  face. 

In  a  claret-coloured  livery  coat,  black  knee-breeches  and 
white  stockings  stood  David  O'Rane.  Our  eyes  met,  but  he 
gave  no  sign  of  recognition  and  a  moment  later  he  had  hurried 
away  with  an  obsequious  "Very  good,  my  lord." 

As  we  waited  for  our  coats  an  hour  or  two  later,  Jim 
whispered,  "I'm  going  to  tell  the  Guv'nor.  It's  hardly  decent, 
you  know.  A  Meltonian  assing  about  like  that.  The  Guv'- 
nor must  get  him  out  of  it."  He  turned  to  his  father.  "I  say, 
dad,  did  you  particularly  notice  our  waiter  ?" 

"Yes.     Rather  a  capable  youngster,  I  thought." 

"Well,  he's  .  .  .  he's  ..."  Jim  stammered  unwontedly 
and  seemed  suddenly  to  repent  his  purpose. 

"What  about  him  ?"  asked  Lord  Loring. 

"Oh,  nothing.    He  comes  from  Melton,  that's  all." 

"From  the  'Raven'  ?' 

"No,  another  place  farther  up  the  hill,"  Jim  answered 
vaguely. 

"Funny  you  should  meet  him  here,"  observed  Lord  Loring, 
as  he  lit  a  cigar. 

And  with  those  words  the  subject  was  dropped. 


CHAPTER    II 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN 


•rijv  T«  ., 

TIVOC  f)  (j.a6iQixorroi;  ^  6e<iiiaTo<;,  8  jj/f)  xpuipOev  dtv  TC<;  TU>V  •rcoXey.fov  ZSebv  (^e 
ictOTEuovueq  oi  Tats  icapaaxeuais  Tb  xX^ov  xal  Ceic&TaK;  ^  T<p  dy'  r^wv  aitwv 
^?  TO:  ipya  eiiil'uxV  xat  ^v  Tat?  icatSefat?  ol  (jiv  Iicnc6v«i)  d(JX.^cet  e66Ci<;  v^ot  SvTe? 
rb  dvSpelov  lAer^pxovrat,  ifKiel?  8s  dvec^vax;  5iatTa>(Aevot  o68iv  ^aaov  iiA  TOU? 
{oowaXets  xtvSivou?  xupou^ev.—  THUCYDIDES,  ii.  39. 

I 


AFTER  the  tempestuous  months  consequent  on  O'Rane's 
arrival  at  Melton,  the  two  succeeding  terms  were  a 
time  of  slumber  and  peace.  The  omnibus  study  next 
to  Prayer  Room  became  vacant  at  Christmas,  and  on  our  re7 
turn  at  the  end  of  January  we  found  Mayhew,  Sinclair  and 
O'Rane  in  possession.  We  found  also  an  ominous  hand- 
printing-press  clamped  on  to  the  window-sill,  and  from  this  in- 
judicious outcome  of  an  uncle's  Christmas  largess  Mayhew  set 
himself  to  produce  a  weekly  sheet  rivalling  "The  Times"  in 
authority,  the  "Spectator"  in  elegance,  and  the  "Junius  Let- 
ters" in  pointedness  of  criticism  and  personality. 

Before  the  term  was  a  month  old  the  Editor  had  sunk  to  the 
thankless  and  unclean  position  of  compositor,  while  O'Rane, 
with  his  natural  taste  for  ascendancy,  poured  forth  an  effer- 

59 


60  SONIA 

vescent  stream  of  leaders,  lampoons,  parodies,  dialogues, 
stories  and  poems.  It  was  not  easy  for  anyone  of  less  dom- 
inant personality  to  get  his  voice  heard  or  his  pen's  product 
read  during  the  periods  of  O'Rane's  midsummer  madness.  At 
such  times  he  seemed  to  lose  every  restraint  of  sobriety  and  in 
a  riot  of  high  spirits  would  be  found  organizing  stupendous 
practical  jokes  or  subjecting  the  very  stones  of  Great  Court  to 
satirical  tirades  in  facile  impromptu  verse.  Throughout  life 
his  vitality  was  amazing,  and  from  time  to  time  at  school  and 
Oxford  it  seemed  as  though  he  must  break  out  or  choke. 

Thanks  to  the  printing-press,  Mayhew  found  the  circula- 
tion of  the  "Junior  Mathesonian"  rising  with  each  issue.  I 
have  a  complete  set  somewhere,  and  to  read  again  the  ebul- 
litions of  O'Rane's  untiring  pen  is  to  see  again  the  wild,  black- 
eyed,  lean-faced,  Villonesque  figure  of  the  author.  He  was 
always  at  enmity  with  someone,  and  the  last  word  in  each  alter- 
cation is  usually  to  be  found  in  his  weekly  "Dialogues  of  the 
Damned,"  in  which  the  enemy  of  the  moment  is  depicted  ex- 
plaining to  the  Devil  his  presence  in  hell. 

Beresford,  Second  Master,  headed  the  list.  As  a  dis- 
ciplinarian who  had  six  several  times  failed  to  secure  a  head- 
mastership  elsewhere,  he  was  a  formidable  authority  on  the 
rules  and  traditions  of  the  school  and  knew  to  a  nicety  exactly 
where  Burgess's  loose  grip  and  casual  methods  were  lowering 
the  prestige  of  Melton.  Without  in  any  way  opposing  the 
existing  policy  of  letting  the  Sixth  run  the  school,  Beresford 
gladly  conceded  that  the  Sixth  should  at  least  set  an  example. 
This,  he  held,  was  not  done  when  one  member  roamed  dream- 
ily along  the  Southampton  road  and  engaged  in  conversation 
with  the  varied,  disreputable,  semi-seafaring  tramps  who 
begged  their  way  through  Melton  to  London  and  on  whose 
account  the  great  road  was  put  out  of  bounds  for  all  juniors. 
Burgess  declined  to  limit  bounds  farther,  but  supported  his 
colleague  to  the  extent  of  a  few  words  with  O'Rane — a  course 
that  strengthened  Beres ford's  conviction  that  Melton  was 
going  to  the  dogs  and  sowed  plentiful  resentment  in  the  breast 
of  O'Rane. 

I  see  no  purpose  in  following  up  in  detail  the  quarrel  with 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      61 

Greenwood  (Dialogue  III)  over  the  Promenade  Concert  and 
the  unexplained  wrecking  of  No.  1  Music  Room;  nor  with 
Ponsonby  (Dialogue  VII-  over  the  Freedom  of  the  Press. 
The  "J.  M.,"  smudgily  printed  by  Mayhew  and  ornately  illus- 
trated by  Draycott,  was  certainly  not  intended  to  enter  the 
shabby,  panelled  Common  Room  over  Big  Gateway.  The  in- 
ternecine animosity  of  the  great,  however,  is  sometimes  more 
marked  than  their  discretion,  and  Hanson,  who  had  not  spoken 
to  Grimshaw  since  their  whist  quarrel  five  years  earlier,  al- 
lowed himself  to  be  seen  in  one  of  the  bursting  Common 
Room  arm-chairs  with  his  feet  in  the  fender  and  his  trousers 
scorching,  engaged  in  delighted  perusal  of  the  Grimshaw  Dia- 
logue. Inasmuch  as  Grimshaw  favoured  the  boys  of  his  own 
house  against  all  comers,  he  was  unpopular,  and  the  Grim- 
shaw number  of  the  "J.M."  was  received  with  grateful  appre- 
ciation by  all  his  colleagues,  with  the  exception  of  Beresford, 
who  had  suffered  in  silence  from  an  earlier  week's  attack. 
Succeeding  issues  were  received  with  slightly  less  favour,  as 
the  minority  of  victims  grew  in  number.  With  the  appear- 
ance of  "J.M.  VII,"  Ponsonby  decided  to  refer  the  case  to  Bur- 
gess and  with  the  support  of  six  actual  fellow-sufferers  and  a 
dozen  awaiting  their  turn,  he  ^constituted  himself  a  deputation. 
The  Head  was  sympathetic  but  not  helpful.  The  paper,  he 
pointed  out,  was  issued  only  to  subscribers  and  seemingly 
contained  nothing  of  the  blasphemous  or  obscene. 

"If  it  were  a  matter  of  wrong,  or  wicked  lewdness,"  said 
Burgess,  "reason  would  that  I  should  bear  with  you." 

"I  don't  feel  that  any  boy — let  alone  a  Sixth-form  boy — 
should  be  allowed  to  circulate  studied  insults  to  the  Staff," 
rejoined  Ponsonby. 

"If  it  be  a  question  of  words  and  names,"  Burgess  ad- 
vised, "look  ye  to  it." 

"O'Rane's  in  the  Sixth,"  Ponsonby  objected.  "Unless  he's 
degraded  from  Sixth- form  rank,  what  am  I  to  do?" 

Burgess  affected  to  think  deeply. 

"The  Lord  will  provide,"  he  said. 

The  "Dialogues  of  the  Damned"  are  an  incomplete  series, 
arrested  in  mid-course  at  No.  VII ;  the  "J.M.,"  however,  had 


62  SONIA 

a  life  of  more  than  two  years  and  only  died  when  O'Rane,  as 
captain  of  the  school,  had  to  edit  the  official  "Meltonian." 

A  remove  into  the  Sixth  at  Melton  marked  an  epoch  in 
most  lives.  There  was,  and  is,  only  one  Burgess  in  the  schol- 
astic system,  and  until  you  met  him  five  hours  a  day  for  six 
days  a  week  you  could  form  no  estimate  of  the  range  of  his 
knowledge.  Every  school  has  its  Under  Sixth,  its  Villiers  and 
its  mixed  assembly  of  brilliant  boys  awaiting  their  remove, 
mediocre  boys  who  have  come  to  stay  and  dull  boys  charitably 
piloted  and  tugged  into  the  haven  of  rest  because  their  house- 
masters do  not  care  to  make  monitors  of  boys  in  the  Fifth. 
In  my  time  the  lot  of  Villiers  was  not  to  be  envied,  for  the 
dullards  slept,  the  mediocre  ragged,  and  the  scholars  had  to 
do  their  best  to  snatch  instruction  from  the  ruins  of  Babel, 
assisted  by  a  man  whose  boast  would  never  have  been  that  he 
was  a  ruler  of  men  or  an  inspired  teacher  and  whose  blood 
almost  audibly  rushed  to  his  head  as  he  strove  to  maintain, 
discipline. 

Thirty  years  before  Villiers  had  taken  a  first  in  Mods., 
and  though  the  fine  edge  of  his  mind  had  lost  its  keenness, 
he  held  to  the  Mods,  tradition  that  the  Classics  should  be 
read  in  bulk.  That,  indeed,  is  the  best  thing  I  remember 
about  the  man  or  his  system.  We  scampered  through  the 
"Odyssey,"  "^Eneid,"  and  plays  of  Sophocles  at  a  great  rate 
and  with  no  attention  to  detail.  Pure  scholarship,  if  it  ever 
came,  was  to  come  later,  and  in  the  meantime  Villiers  saved 
succeeding  generations  from  the  reproach  levelled  against 
a  classical  education — that  the  fruit  of  many  years'  plodding 
is  to  be  measured  by  the  assimilation  of  one  book  of  Horace's 
Odes  or  a  single  play  by  Euripides.  Villiers  left  us,  and  we 
left  Villiers,  with  more  than  a  smattering  of  great  literature. 

In  the  Sixth  we  read  as  much  or  as  little  as  we  pleased. 
Most  of  us  had  a  scholarship  in  view,  and  the  degree  of  our 
unpreparedness  was  the  degree  of  attention  with  which  we 
confined  ourselves  to  the  text.  Beyond  that  minimum  the 
rule  was  to  sit  and  encourage  Burgess  to  talk.  Sometimes 
he  would  forget  a  book 'and,  for  want  of  fixed  work,  open  a 
Lexicon  and  choose  a  word  at  random.  He  would  give  us 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      63 

the  childhood  and  old  age  of  that  word,  its  parents  and 
uttermost  collaterals ;  and  from  a  single  word  he  would  treat 
of  ethnology  as  revealed  by  language  and  comparative  civiliza- 
tion as  measured  by  the  limits  of  a  vocabulary.  And  from 
comparative  civilization  to  the  institutions  and  faiths  on  which 
a  society  is  built  up — the  religion  and  magic  that  shroud  the 
dark  days  of  the  human  mind. 

Even  to  a  temperamental  iconoclast  such  as  O'Rane,  I 
fancy  Burgess  came  as  a  revelation.  At  the  term's  end  he 
showed  me  a  manuscript  book  entitled  "Notes  on  Theophras- 
tus."  To  do  Burgess  justice  we  had  read  three  pages  in  thir- 
teen weeks;  the  rest  of  the  book  was  consecrated  to  obiter 
dicta:  "The  Trade  Routes  of  Turkestan";  "Lost  Processes 
in  Stained  Glass";  "The  Origin  of  Playing  Cards";  "The 
Margin  of  Error  in  Modern  Field  Artillery";  "The  Institu- 
tion of  Arbitrage";  "The  Minaret  as  a  Feature  in  Architec- 
ture"; "Surgery  in  Mediaeval  China" — and  a  score  of  other 
subjects.  Theophrastus  bored  us,  and  we  decided  to  take  him 
as  read.  The  decision  once  adopted,  there  was  no  difficulty  in 
keeping  Burgess  away  from  the  text. 

On  reflection  I  think  that  O'Rane  may,  in  his  turn,  have 
been  a  revelation  to  Burgess  as  much  as  to  the  rest  of  the  form. 
If  omniscience  were  the  order  of  the  day,  O'Rane  seems  to 
have  decided  to  be  omniscient.  It  was  a  fixed  principle  with 
him  never  to  bring  books  into  form.  Burgess  would  look 
wearily  round  and  say,  "O'Rane,  wilt  thou  read  from  'Pro- 
tinus  Aeneas  celeri  certare  sagitta,'  laddie?"  And  Raney, 
with  his  hands  clasped  behind  his  back  and  eyes  gazing  across 
to  the  big  open  fire,  would  recite  thirty,  fifty  or  a  hundred  lines 
as  Burgess  might  decide,  in  a  voice  that  would  cause  him  to  be 
taken  untrained  on  any  stage.  In  part  it  was  a  studied  pose, 
in  part  I  believe  he  never  forgot  anything  he  had  twice  read. 
And  his  memory  was  minutely  accurate.  I  recall  a  disputa- 
tion on  one  of  Bentley's  emendations  of  Horace ;  neither  Bur- 
gess nor  O'Rane  had  a  book,  but  each  was  prepared  to  go  to  the 
stake  for  his  own  version.  Sutcliffe  was  eventually  dispatched 
to  School  Library,  and  a  referenceito  the  text  showed  that  Bur- 
gess was  wrong. 


64  SONIA 

"Where  were  you  before  you  came  here?"  Loring  asked 
that  evening,  when  O'Rane  and  I  were  sitting  in  his  study 
after  prayers. 

"Guess  I  was  in  most  places,"  O'Rane  answered  from  the 
depths  of  the  arm-chair  and  a  book. 

"Where  were  you  educated,  fathead?  And  don't  'guess,' 
it's  a  vile  Americanism." 

Loring  affected  great  precision  of  speech. 

"I — fancy — I — received — instruction — from  —  numerous — 
persons — in — a — var-i-ety — of — places."  And  then  witk  a 
sudden  blaze  of  light  in  his  big  eyes : 

"Much  have  I  seen  and  known,  cities  of  men, 
And  manners,  climates,  councils,  governments, 
Myself  not  least,  but  honoured  of  them  all    ... 

My  God !  'honoured  of  them  all !'  "     He  stopped  suddenly. 

"The  next  time  you  break  out,  you'll  get  the  cocoa-sauce- 
pan at  your  head,"  I  warned  him.  "Now  answer  Jim's  ques- 
tion." 

O'Rane  sat  staring  at  the  fire  until  Loring  threw  a  waste- 
paper  basket  at  him. 

"If  you  start  scrapping "  he  began.  "Oh,  what  was 

yaur  dam*  silly  question?  Dear  man,  I  was  born  in  Prague, 
and,  as  I  never  stayed  six  months  in  the  same  country  till  I 
came  to  England,  you  can  see  my  education  was  a  bit  of  mixed 
grill.  Father  .  .  ."  he  hesitated ;  it  was  the  first  time  I  had 
heard  him  mention  any  relation,  " .  .  .  .  father  used  to 
teach  me  a  bit  himself.  And  once  or  twice  I  had  a  tutor. 
And  for  the  most  part  he  used  to  lay  on  a  local  priest.  That's 
why  I  can  hardly  understand  the  way  you  chaps  pronounce 
Latin  and  Greek.  And  then  the  Great  Interregnum,  the 
Wanderjahre.  .  .  ." 

"Most  of  your  life's  been  that,"  I  commented. 

"Ah,  I  did  this  stunt  alone — before  I  came  here.  After 
the  war." 

"The  Greek  War?"  Loring  asked. 

"Surely.  They  killed  my  father,  did  the  Turks.  And 
•when  I'd  buried  him  there  was  nothing  much  to  wait  for. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      65 

He'd  given  every  last  penny  to  the  Greeks,  so  I  cleared  out 
and  came  to  England  by  way  of  Japan  and  the  States  and 
a  few  other  places.  It  was  all  valuable  experience,"  he  added, 
with  a  concentrated  bitterness  that  made  my  blood  run  cold. 
When  O'Rane  spoke  in  that  tone,  I  could  imagine  him  primed 
and  anxious  for  murder. 

"And  drunk  delight  of  battle  with  my  peers 
Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy," 

he  went  on.  "  'Delight  of  battle' !  Oh,  my  God !  These  poets 
and  modern  war !" 

"Did  you  see  anything  of  it?"  I  asked. 

He  shook  his  head.  "I  was  a  kid  of  thirteen.  I  saw  the 
— results  .  .  .  when  they  brought  my  father  back  to  the 
Piraeus." 

Loring  had  been  lying  on  his  back  with  his  hands  locked 
under  his  head.  He  roused  himself  now  to  turn  on  one  side 
and  face  O'Rane. 

"Was  your  father  Lord  O'Rane  ?"  he  asked. 

Raney's  face  grew  hard  and  defiant. 

"He  was." 

Loring  nodded.  "When  he  was  killed  the  Guv'nor  noticed 
the  name.  I  rather  think  your  property  marches  with  some 
of  ours.  You're  County  Longford,  aren't  you  ?" 

"The  property  is.  I,  Lord  Chepstow,  am  what  you  would 
doubtless  call  a  bastard." 

Loring  sprang  to  his  feet. 

"Raney,  you  damned  little  swine !" 

"It's  true !"  O'Rane  answered,  jumping  up  and  facing  him. 

"It's  not  true  that  I  would   .   .   .  !" 

"Oh,  perhaps  not.  But  I've  been  called  it — and  by  lineal 
descendants  of  the  Unrepentant  Thief,  too.  You've  got  nickel- 
plated  manners,  of  course." 

"If  you  were  worth  a  curse,  you'd  apologize,"  said  Loring, 
hotly. 

O'Rane  reflected. 

"What  for?"  he  demanded.  "I'm  not  ashamed  of  my 
father,  Loring." 


66  SONIA 

"You'd  be  a  pretty  fair  louse  if  you  were.  Don't  make 
me  lose  my  temper  again,  you  little  beast." 

O'Rane  held  out  his  hand  with  a  curious,  embarrassed 
smile. 

"Sorry,  Loring.     Is  that  good  enough?" 

"We  can  rub  along  on  that." 

Some  years  later  my  guardian,  Bertrand  Oakleigh,  ap- 
peased my  curiosity  on  the  subject  of  the  O'Rane  fortunes. 
"The  Liberator,"  after  a  crowded  boyhood  of  agitation  and 
intrigue,  became  so  deeply  implicated  in  certain  acts  of 
Fenianism  that  he  had  to  leave  Ireland  in  disguise  and  live 
abroad  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  For  thirty  years  he  wandered 
from  one  capital  to  another,  preaching  insurrection  and  being 
disowned  by  the  Government  of  his  own  country.  When  the 
Foreign  Office  papers  of  the  period  are  made  public,  his  name 
will  be  found  forming  the  subject  of  heated  diplomatic  dis- 
patches. As  a  neutral  his  conduct  was  far  from  correct  in 
the  Polish  rising  of  '63  and  the  Balkan  trouble  of  '76.  When 
he  lived  as  the  guest  of  the  exiled  Louis  Kossuth,  pressure 
was  brought  to  bear  by  the  secret  police,  and  he  moved  north 
into  Switzerland.  There  he  met  Mrs.  Raynter,  one  of  the 
famous  three  beautiful  Taverton  sisters.  The  influence  of 
Lord  O'Rane's  personality  was  not  confined  to  political  audi- 
ences: she  lived  with  him  for  three  years,  and  died  in  giving 
birth  to  a  son.  When  Lord  O'Rane  himself  succumbed  to 
wounds  received  in  the  Grseco-Turkish  War,  he  was  only  in 
the  fifties.  The  measure  of  his  power  and  sway  is  to  be  found 
less  in  any  positive  achievement  than  in  the  terror  he  inspired 
in  the  less  stable  Governments  of  Europe  from  Russia  to 
Spain. 


Winter  softened  into  spring,  and  spring  lengthened  into 
the  summer  that  was  to  be  my  last  at  Melton.  The  few  re- 
maining months  are  engraved  deeply  on  my  memory  as  though 
I  lived  an  intenser  life  to  capture  the  last  shreds  of  heritage 
that  the  school  held  out  to  me.  As  in  a  sudden  mellowing  I 


6? 

found  myself  on  terms  of  unexpected  friendliness  with  people 
I  had  previously  disliked  or  despised.  Beresford — lank  dis- 
ciplinarian— invited  me  to  dine  in  College,  and  revealed  him- 
self unwontedly  human  and  well-informed  on  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling ;  Ponsonby,  whom  I  had  lightly  written  of  as  a  pretentious 
ass,  proved  on  better  acquaintance  to  be  a  man  of  self-paralys- 
ing shyness  who  lived  in  almost  physical  dread  of  his  form; 
Grimshaw,  most  stolid  of  men  in  official  life,  shone  without 
warning  as  a  raconteur  and  mimic  of  his  colleagues.  I  dined 
or  breakfasted  with  them  all,  not  excluding  little  Matheson 
with  his  unwieldy  tribe  of  children,  and  we  talked  unbroken 
"shop"  and  disinterred  old  scandals  and  parted  with  a  senti- 
mental, "You'll  be  sorry  to  leave  Melton  ?"  "Very  sorry,  sir." 

The  vanity  of  eighteen  is  long  dead,  and  I  can  recall  with 
amusement  that  I  had  serious  misgivings  for  the  school's  future 
after  I  should  have  left.  For  five  years  and  more  it  had 
been  all  my  world.  I  remembered  the  veneration  with  which,  as 
a  fag,  I  had  gazed  on  the  gladiators  of  the  Eleven  and  the 
Witan  of  the  Sixth — gazed  and  flushed  with  self-consciousness 
and  shy  gratification  when  one  of  them  ordered  me  to  carry 
his  books  across  Great  Court.  In  time  I  too  had  made  my  way 
into  the  Sixth;  there  was  at  first  nothing  very  wonderful  or 
dignified  about  the  position,  but  by  no  immoderate  stretch  of 
imagination  I  could  fancy  myself  venerated  as  I  had  venerated 
the  heroes  of  five  years  before.  And  without  doubt  I  looked 
proudly  on  my  work  in  the  Monitorial  Council :  we  had  been 
strict  but  not  harsh,  reserved  but  not  aloof,  reformers  but  not 
iconoclasts — statesmen  to  a  man.  At  every  point  we  seemed 
superior  to  our  immediate  predecessors,  and  the  only  bitterness 
in  our  cup  was  brought  by  the  reflection  that  this  Golden  Age 
would  so  soon  pass  away.  It  was  inconceivable  that  youngsters 
like  Marlowe,  Clayton  or  Dennis  could  fill  our  shoes.  They 
were  boys.  I  remember  that  Loring  and  I  took  Clayton  on  one 
side  and  revealed  some  few  of  the  secrets  of  our  successful 
rule;  I  remember,  too,  how  extraordinarily  Clayton  resented 
our  patronage.  .  .  . 

The  recorded  history  of  the  last  two  terms  is  meagre,  but  I 
recollect  that  O'Rane  came  twice  into  conflict  with  authority 


68  SONIA 

before  we  parted.  The  first  time  was  an  unhappy  occasion 
when  the  May-Day  celebrations  of  the  Melton  carpet-makers 
coincided  with  one  of  his  periodical  outbursts.  A  plethoric 
meeting  of  somnolent  workmen  was  being  somewhat  furtively 
held  in  the  more  somnolent  market  square;  moist,  earnest 
speakers  declaimed  under  a  hot  sun  to  a  listless  audience.  When 
Dainton  and  I  passed  through  the  square,  oratory  was  getting 
worsted,  and  the  meeting  was  summoning  resolution  to  spend 
the  rest  of  the  warm  May  afternoon  in  sleep.  Then  O'Rane 
appeared  galvanically  from  the  West.  And  soon  afterwards 
from  the  East,  with  dragging  steps  and  eyes  glued  to  his  book, 
came  Burgess  in  cap  and  cassock,  his  pockets  swollen  with 
the  books  he  had  bought  in  Grantham's. 

That  night  O'Rane  spent  forty-five  minutes  in  the  Head's 
house — an  unusual  time  for  anything  but  sentence  of  expulsion. 
Loring  and  I  were  walking  up  and  down  Great  Court  with  our 
watches  in  our  hands,  prepared  to  intercede  with  speeches  of 
incredible  eloquence  if  the  worst  came  to  the  worst.  Through 
the  bright,  unblinded  library  windows  we  could  see  Raney 
pleading;  the  back  of  Burgess's  white  head  was  visible  above 
his  chair,  motionless,  and  seemingly  inexorable. 

"What's  happened?" 

The  door  had  opened  slowly  and  shut  with  a  clang. 
O'Rane  was  walking  towards  us  with  a  white  face  that  belied 
his  jaunty  step. 

"It's  not  to  occur  again."  The  anticlimax  was  an  uninten- 
tional trick  of  phrasing.  "Well,  it  won't.  I  can't  work  that 
lay  a  second  time.  D'you  know  he  sacked  me  within  five 
seconds  of  rny  entering  the  room?  I — had — to — fight — for — 
very — life."  He  breathed  hard,  linked  arms  and  marched  us 
off  for  a  walk  around  the  Cloisters. 

"Drive  ahead,"  said  Loring. 

"  'Laddie,  thy  portion  is  with  the  malefactors.  Get  thee 
gone,  and  walk  henceforth  in  outer  darkness.'  I  say,  the  old 
man's  formidable  when  he's  angry.  I  said  nothing,  and  he 
waved  me  to  the  door.  I  didn't  move.  'Get  thee  gone,  laddie,' 
he  thundered,  'and  let  not  the  sun  of  to-morrow  rise  to  find  thee 
in  this  place.'  I  asked  him  what  I'd  done;  he  sort  of  sug- 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      69 

gested  that  I  really  knew  all  the  time.  I  told  him  my  version." 
O'Rane  stopped  and  drew  back  a  step  with  arms  outstretched. 
"I  told  him  I'd  found  that  sweet  May-Day  meeting  with  pot- 
bellied whimperers  gassing  over  an  Eight  Hour  Day  and  drink- 
ing enough  beer  to  drown  'emselves  in.  The  May-Days  /  know 
were  the  ones  where  the  mob  broke  up  half  Turin  and  were 
shot  down  by  the  soldiery :  they  were  men  with  something  to 
fight  for — and  ready  to  fight  for  it.  These  sodden  voter 
vermin !  If  they'd  organize  with  their  cursed  votes — if  they'd 

fight — if  they'd  do  anything — if  they  were  in  earnest ! 

My  God,  your  English  Labour !"  His  utterance  quickened  and 
his  voice  grew  animated  to  the  point  of  passion.  "I  told  these 
scabrous  dogs  to  put  their  lousy  shoulders  to  the  wheel.  God 
knows  what  I  didn't  call  'em,  but  they  were  too  sodden  to  mind, 
and  I  found  I  was  speaking  in  French  half  the  time.  Then 
they  got  an  idea  I'd  come  over  from  Paris  to  champion  them, 
and  they  cheered  no  end.  So  I  taught  'em  the  'Marseillaise/ 
and  half-way  through  the  second  verse  Burgess  drifted  into 
view.  I  told  him  in  his  library  as  I'm  telling  you  here  .  .  ." 

"I  hope  to  the  Lord  you  didn't !"  Loring  interjected. 

"I  told  him  every  last  word.  The  Cloisters  echoed  with  his 
excitement.  "You  bat-ears,  you  don't  understand !  He  did !" 
"What  did  he  say?"  I  asked. 

O'Rane  hesitated.  "He  hinted  that  I  wasn't  accountable  for 
my  actions."  * 

I  burst  out  laughing.  The  words  were  so  obviously  inade- 
quate. 

"That's  a  curious  reason  for  not  sacking  you,"  was  Lor- 
ing's  comment. 

O'Rane's  black  eyes,  seemingly  fixed  on  a  gargoyle  over 
Chapel  door,  were  gazing  into  infinity. 

"He  said  it  was  the  Call  of  the  Blood.  And  I — I — I  just 
said  nothing."  His  voice  sank  to  a  whisper.  "I  hardly  under- 
stood." 

The  vision  was  for  his  eyes  alone,  and  to  us,  uncomprehend- 
ing, the  rapt  expression  of  his  face  and  tense  poise  of  the  body 
was  curiously  disconcerting.  Awkwardly  self-conscious,  Lor- 
ing stepped  forward  and  thrust  his  arm  through  O'Rane's. 


70  SONIA 

"Pull  yourself  together,  my  son,"  he  said. 

O'Rane  shook  free  of  his  arm.  "You  don't  understand! 
But  he  did.  He  knew  it  all.  There  was  one  crossed  to  France 
in  the  Revolution,  and  him  they  guillotined  because  he  was  too 
powerful.  And  two  died  for  Greece,  and  one  went  fighting  for 
the  North  and  the  slaves.  And  one  died  by  the  wayside  as 
the  king's  troops  entered  Rome.  And  one  tended  lepers  in  a 
South  Pacific  island."  He  strode  up  to  Loring  and  stared  him 
defiantly  in  the  face.  "And  some  day  men  will  follow  me  as 
they  never  followed  one  of  the  others !" 

Come  to  earth,  you  lunatic,"  said  Loring ;  and  I  was  grate- 
ful to  him  for  the  chill  banality  of  the  words. 

O'Rane  turned  disgustedly  on  his  heel. 

"You  wouldn't  understand  if  you  lived  to  be  a  thousand," 
he  flung  back  over  his  shoulder. 

"Come  back !"  Loring  called.  "There's  nothing  to  get  shirty 
about." 

"You've  the  soul  of  a  flunkey !" 

"All  right ;  so  much  the  worse  for  me." 

"And  anyone  who's  not  got  your  own  servants'  half  spirit 
you  call  a  lunatic !" 

Loring  sat  down  on  the  stone  seat  that  ran  round  the 
inner  wall  of  Cloisters  and  beckoned  to  O'Rane  to  join  him. 

"Come  and  cool  down  a  bit,  Raney,"  he  urged.  "And  for 
the  Lord's  sake  don't  make  such  a  row  or  you'll  bring  Linden 
and  Smollet  out  of  their  rooms." 

"You've  got  a  bourgeoise  mind,  Loring,"  said  O'Rene  re- 
flectively. 

"Agreed,  but  don't  shout,"  Loring  returned  imperturb- 
ably.  "I  want  you  to  tell  me — quite  quietly — how  you  prove 
your  nobility  of  soul  by  running  the  risk  of  getting  sacked  for 
the  sake  of  making  an  idiotic  speech  to  a  mob  of  workmen 
who  didn't  particularly  want  to  hear  you  ?  You  tell  me  I  shall 
never  understand,  but  do  at  least  tell  me  what  I've  missed." 

"A  soul,"  O'Rane  answered  simply. 

"It's  like  trying  to  argue  with  a  woman,"  said  Loring  in 
despair. 

The  prayer-bell  began  to  ring  in  the  distance,  and  we  made 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      71 

our  way  out  of  the  Cloisters  and  across  Great  Court.  O'Rane, 
at  the  last  moment,  decided  to  stay  behind,  and  we  left  him 
curled  up  on  the  stone  seat,  his  thin,  clean  features  white  in 
the  moonlight  and  his  great  deep-set  eyes  gazing  abstractedly 
across  Fighting  Green.  He  was  back  in  Matheson's  for  Roll 
Call  and  sauntered  into  my  study  with  his  hands  in  his  pock- 
ets and  a  straw  in  his  mouth.  The  flame  of  emotion  had  burnt 
itself  out,  and  he  seemed  cold,  tired,  and  a  little  melancholy. 

"Humble  apologies  and  all  that  sort  of  thing,"  he  began, 
holding  out  his  hand  to  Loring. 

"You  haven't  told  us  why  you  did  it?"  I  reminded  him. 

He  wrinkled  his  brow  and  shook  his  head  in  perplexity. 

"Didn't  seem  as  if  I  could  help  it.  'Man  was  born  free  and 
is  everywhere  in  chains.'  I've  been  through  a  bit — trying  to 
get  enough  to  feed  and  clothe  myself — and  it  was  hell.  And 
sometimes  it  all  comes  back  to  me  and  I  want  to  blow  the 
whole  world  up.  .  .  .  And  sometimes  I  dream  what  a  glorious 
thing  we  could  make  of  life,  even  for  the  men  who  sweep  the 
chimneys  and  mend  the  sewers.  .  .  .  To-day. . . ."  He 
shrugged  his  shoulders.  "I'd  forgotten  the  everlasting  Press. 
After  the  kings,  the  nobles ;  after  the  nobles,  the  people ;  and 
after  the  people,  the  Press.  So  Burgess  says.  And  Melton's 
not  strong  enough  to  stand  the  racket  if  every  beach-comber 
with  a  halfpenny  in  his  pocket  can  read  that  a  Melton  boy 
led  the  'Marseillaise'  in  Market  Square." 

"Quite  right,  too.    It  gives  the  school  a  dam'  bad  name." 

"Oh,  I  agree — now,"  he  answered  limply.  "He  told  me  to 
choose  my  punishment." 

"And  what  did  you  say  ?"  I  asked. 

"I  said,  'You  aren't  sacking  me  then,  sir?'  He  said,  'Sack- 
ing, laddie?  What  strange  tongue  is  this?'  And  then  I  knew 
I  was  all  right.  Clayton'll  be  captain  next  year.  He'd  have 
made  me,  otherwise.  Can't  be  helped.  And  I  guess  I  got 
Melton  in  my  vest  pocket  most  ways.  Good-night,  bat-ears. 
I'm  going  to  bed." 

As  the  door  closed  behind  him  Loring  sighed  to  himself. 

"If  he  isn't  sacked  for  this,  he'll  be  sacked  for  something 
else,"  he  predicted.  "I  hope  it  won't  be  till  I'm  gone,  because 


72  SONIA 

he  refreshes  me.    D'you  remember  his  first  term?" 
"He's  extraordinarily  popular  now,"  I  said. 
"He's   the  most    fearless  little  beast   I   ever  met.     And 
there's  such  a  glorious  uncertainty  about  him.    One  moment 
he's  your  long-lost  brother,  the  next  he's  slanging  you  like 
a  pickpocket  in  about  six  languages,  the  next  he's  apologizing 
and  shaking  hands.    I  suppose  he'll  be  captain  the  year  after 
next.    It'll  be  an  eventful  time  for  the  school." 

O'Rane's  other  conflict  with  authority  was  less  impassioned 
and  on  a  smaller  scale.  He  had  absented  himself  from 
Chapel  for  the  better  part  of  the  term,  and  Burgess  one  day 
inquired  the  reason. 

"I  don't  believe  all  the  stuff  they  hand  out  there,  sir." 
"Have   I   asked   thee   to   believe   it,    laddie?"    demanded 
Burgess,  who  had  almost  ceased  to  expect  polished  diction 
from  O'Rane. 

"Well,  sir,  if  I  pretend  to  believe  it.  .  .  ." 
"Have  I  asked  thee  to  pretend,  laddie?" 
"But  if  I  go,  sir,  people  naturally  assume.  .  .  ." 
"And  how  long  has  David  O'Rane  given  ear  to  the  vain 
repetitions  of  the  Synagogue  and  Market-place?" 

For  the   moment  Raney   experienced   some  difficulty   in 
finding  an  answer.    Then  he  said : 
"I'll  go  if  you  want  me  to,  sir." 

"Laddie,  thou  are  of  an  age  to  determine  this  for  thyself. 
I  am  an  old  man,  broken  with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  this 
life.  Peradventure  the  wisdom  and  truth  that  were  taught  me 
while  I  hanged  yet  upon  my  mother's  breast  no  longer  charm 
the  ears  of  the  younger  men.  Peradventure 

"The  Saints  and  Sages  that  discussed 
Of  the  two  Worlds  so  learnedly  are  thrust 

Like  Foolish  Prophets  forth;  their  words  to  scorn 
Are  scattered,  and  their  Mouths  are  stopt  with  Dust." 

Herein  thou  must  walk  thine  own  road,  laddie. 

"Certain  points,  left  wholly  to  himself, 
When  once  a  man  has  arbitrated  on, 
We  say  he  must  succeed  there  or  go  hang. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      73 

....    he  must  avouch, 

Or  follow,  at  the  least,  sufficiently, 

The  form  of  faith  his  conscience  holds  the  best, 

Whate'er  the  process  of  conviction  was: 

For  nothing  can  compensate  his  mistake 

On  such  a  point,  the  man  himself  being  judge: 

He  cannot  wed  twice,  nor  twice  lose  his  soul." 

An  them  thinkest  thou  canst  learn  aught  from  the  life  of  the 
man  Christ  Jesus,  laddie,  thy  time  will  not  be  lost." 

Thereafter  O'Rane  attended  Chapel  with  assiduity  until  the 
breaking-up  service  on  the  last  day. 

For  weeks  we  had  been  saying  good-bye  to  Melton,  dis- 
mantling our  studies,  packing  our  books,  seeking  our  porters 
and  groundmen  to  press  upon  them  our  last  tip.  The  final 
morning  saw  us  seated  betimes  at  Leaving  Breakfast — a  quaint 
Saturnalia  whereat  all  discipline  departed  and  every  junior  in 
Hall  was  compelled  to  read  a  rimed  criticism  of  the  departing 
monitors.  I  recall  that  Tom  Dainton,  who  had  almost  single- 
handed  won  the  Cricket  Shield  and  established  Matheson's  in 
a  tenth  year  of  unbroken  tenure,  received  a  rousing  send-off; 
Loring  and  I  were  let  down  lightly,  while  Draycott  was 
pointedly  informed  that  his  hair  was  unduly  long  and  his 
clothes  an  eyesore. 

We  were  allowed  no  reply  to  the  chastening  criticism,  but 
acerbity* was  forgotten  when  we  joined  hands  and  sang  "Auld 
Lang  Syne"  with  one  foot  on  the  table.  For  five  years  to  my 
certain  knowledge  the  long  table  had  collapsed  annually  under 
the  unwonted  strain;  to  break  at  least  one  leg  was  now  part 
of  the  accepted  ritual,  and,  though  Matheson  had  spent  money 
and  thought  on  a  cunning  scheme  of  underpinning,  by  dint  of 
concerted  rocking  and  a  sword-dance  executed  by  Dainton, 
we  wrung  a  groan  from  the  ill-used  board  and  doubled  all  four 
legs  into  the  attitude  of  a  kneeling  camel  before  the  bell  sound- 
ed for  first  Roll  Call. 

My  last  Chapel  was  Loring's  first.  Catholic  or  no  he  felt 
the  service  was  not  to  be  missed.  We  sat  side  by  side,  and  de- 
termined there  should  be  none  of  the  foolish  weakness  ex- 
hibited by  other  generations  of  leaving  monitors.  Yet  as  the 
organ  started  to  play  the  last  hymn,  he  failed  to  rise,  and,  as 


74  SONIA 

voices  all  around  me  began  to  sing,  "Lead,  Kindly  Light,"  1 
found  I  could  not  join  in. 

From  Chapel  we  went  to  Big  School  for  our  last  Roll  CalL 
The  prize  compositions  of  the  year  were  read  aloud,  and  the 
scholarship  results  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge  announced. 
There  followed  a  long  distribution  of  gilt-edged,  calf-bound 
books;  three  malefactors  were  led  to  Bishop  Adam's  Birch 
Table  and  flicked  publicly  across  the  back  of  the  hand;  there 
remained  but  one  thing  more. 

"School  Monitors !"  Burgess  called  out 

All  ten  of  us  lined  up  facing  the  Council  with  our  backs  to 
the  school.  The  birch  was  handed  to  Sutcliffe,  who  reversed  it 
restored  it  to  Burgess  and  returned — divested  of  authority — 
to  Second  Monitor's  seat.  The  ritual  was  repeated  with  the 
other  nine,  and  Burgess  called  up  the  new  monitors.  To  each 
of  them  the  birch  was  handed  and  by  each  returned.  Thtn 
Clayton,  the  Captain-Elect,  rose  from  Sutcliffe's  old  seat,  ad- 
vanced to  the  edge  of  the  dais,  knelt  down  in  front  of  the 
Birch  Table,  facing  the  school,  and  read  the  old  Latin  prayers 
that — despite  their  taint  of  popery — Queen  Elizabeth  had 
authorized  us  to  continue,  always  provided  we  dropped  the 
monkish  pronunciation. 

The  last  scene  was  laid  in  Burgess's  library,  where  each  of 
us  was  presented  with  a  copy  of  Browning's  "Men  and 
Women." 

"Peradventure  ye  have  heard  his  words  upon  my  lips  ere 
now,"  he  said.  "Laddie,  these  partings  like  me  not.  I  am  an 
old  man,  broken  with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  this  world,  yet 
it  may  be  that  in  this  transitory  life  an  old  man's  counsel  may 
avail  you  in  the  dark  places  of  the  earth.  Come  to  me,  laddies, 
if  ye  judge  not  an  old  man's  arm  to  be  too  weak  to  help  you. 
At  this  time  and  in  this  place  will  I  say  but  this:  Sutcliffe, 
thou  wilt  consume  thy  days  weighing  the  jots  and  tittles  of 
learning.  Therein  is  thine  heart  buried,  and  I  do  not  gainsay 
thee.  Dainton,  thou  shalt  be  known  in  Judah  as  a  mighty 
man  of  valour.  Thou  art  ceasing  to  be  a  child  and  must 
put  away  childish  things.  Hearken  no  more  to  the  voice  of 
children  playing  in  the  market-place ;  gird  thee  for  battle  to  be 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      75 

a  soldier  of  the  Lord.  Oakleigh,  thine  heart  melteth  away 
and  becometh  water  all  too  easily.  Thou  hast  riches  and  learn- 
ing, but  little  singleness  of  purpose.  Not  for  thee  the  dust  of 
the  arena — thou  art  too  prone  to  hesitate  and  weigh  thy 
doubt.  Best  canst  thou  serve  thy  neighbour  by  girding  on  the 
harness  of  others;  thou  hast  friends  and  kinsmen  in  the  first 
places  of  the  Synagogue :  succour  them." 

He  looked  at  Loring  and  paused.  "Laddie,  I  could  have 
made  of  thee  a  scholar,  but  thou  wouldst  not.  Thou  canst  be 
a  statesman,  but  thou  wilt  not.  The  illusion  of  a  great  po- 
sition surrounds  thee,  and  thou  art  content  to  gather  in  thy 
vessels  of  gold  and  silver,  thine  ivory  and  peacocks,  thy  choice 
books  and  paintings.  Anon  thou  wilt  awaken  and  question 
thyself,  saying,  'Wherefore  have  I  lived  ?'  Ere  that  day  come 
I  counsel  thee  to  journey  to  a  far  country  on  an  embassage 
from  thy  soveran  lord.  I  charge  thee  to  scorn  the  delights 
of  Babylon  lest,  in  the  empty  show  of  Kingship,  the  vanity  of 
gorgeous  apparel,  the  uttering  of  words  in  thy  Council  of 
Elders,  thou  conceive  that  thy  duty  to  God  and  to  thy  neigh- 
bour hath  been  fulfilled.  Laddies,  an  old  man's  blessing  goeth 
with  you." 

in 

And  thus  we  were  taught  and  fitted  to  be  rulers  of  men. 

As  the  London  train  steamed  away  from  Melton  Station, 
Loring  leant  out  of  the  carriage  window  for  a  last  sight  of  the 
school  buildings  clustering  white  in  the  July  sunshine  on  the 
crest  of  the  hill.  Secretly  I  believe  we  were  both  feeling  what 
a  strange  place  Melton  would  be  without  us. 

"Six  years,  old  son!"  he  observed,  drawing  his  head  in. 
"Dam'  good  years  they  were,  too.  Wonder  how  long  it'll  be 
before  you  Radicals  abolish  places  like  this." 

"There  are  lots  of  other  things  I'd  abolish  first,"  I  said. 
It  was  a  mental  convention  with  Loring  to  regard  me  as  a 
jaundiced,  fanatical  Marat,  and  with  the  argumentativeness 
of  youth  I  played  up  to  his  lead. 

"What  good  has  Melton  done  ?"  he  challenged. 


76  SONIA 

At  one  time  my  faith  in  public  schools  was  such  that  I 
generously  pitied  anyone  who  had  struggled  to  manhood  in 
outer  darkness.  Infirmity  of  judgement  or  approaching  mid- 
dle age  make  it  daily  harder  for  me  to  divide  the  institutions 
of  the  world  into  the  Absolutely  Good  or  the  Utterly  Bad. 
It  is  probably  wise  to  raise  up  a  class  of  men  who  shall  be 
educated  and  not  technically  instructed — wide  horizons  and 
an  infinite  capacity  for  learning  constitute  an  aim  sufficiently 
exalted.  That  was  the  aim  of  Melton,  and  we  were  well 
educated  within  narrow  limits  that  excluded  modern  history, 
economics,  English  literature,  science  and  modern  languages. 
We  never  strove  to  be  practical  and  had  a  pathetic  belief  in 
the  validity  of  pure  scholarship  as  an  equipment  for  life. 

I  still  regard  the  study  of  Greek  as  invaluable  training  in 
accuracy,  subtlety  of  thought  and  sense  of  form;  but  I  am 
not  so  ready  as  once  to  go  to  the  stake  for  Greek  in  preference 
to  all  other  subjects.  Again,  I  still  hold  that  the  character- 
moulding  in  a  great  public  school  is  adequate — conceivably, 
however,  as  fine  characters  might  be  moulded  in  other  ways, 
and  there  are  moments  when  I  sympathetically  recall  O'Rane's 
impatient  oft-repeated  outcry  that  England  survived  in  spite 
of  her  public  schools. 

The  good  and  bad  were  so  inextricably  mixed.  Cricket 
and  football  kept  us  physically  fit  and  morally  clean;  we 
learned  something  of  co-ordination  and  discipline — as  other 
nations  may  perhaps  learn  those  same  lessons  from  military 
training.  We  picked  up  an  enduring  and  light-hearted 
acquaintance  with  responsibility  and  acquired  among  mem- 
bers of  our  own  class  a  rigid  sense  of  even-handed  justice 
which  I  seem  always  to  find  breaking  down  when  that  same 
class  is  weighed  in  the  scales  against  another.  Most  doubtful 
blessing  of  all,  we  were  brought  up  to  the  public-school  stan- 
dard of  conduct. 

No  foreigner,  no  Englishman  unless  he  be  of  the  public- 
school  class,  will  ever  understand  that  strange  medley.  It 
is  triumphantly  characteristic  of  higher  social  England  in  its 
inconsistency,  its  intolerance  and  its  inadequacy;  in  its  gen- 
erosity, too,  its  loftiness  and  its  pragmatical  efficiency.  I  never 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      77 

'sneaked,'  though  the  price  of  silence  were  an  undeserved 
thrashing;  I  never  lied  to  master  or  monitor,  though  I  have 
adorned  my  crimes  before  appearing  in  the  dock ;  I  never  en- 
tered for  an  examination  with  dates  or  names  scrawled  on 
my  cuff,  though  I  habitually  used  translations,  and  syndicated 
my  work  with  others  in  my  form.  The  standard  forbade  the 
one  and  allowed  the  other,  and  I  have  spent  half  my  life 
doing  things  that  are  rationally  unjustifiable  and  only  to  be 
defended  on  the  ground  that  they  were  Good  Form.  For  all 
my  Radicalism  I  was  not  brave  enough  to  fling  down  the 
challenge. 

There  is  no  Radicalism  in  schools — I  had  no  business  to 
use  the  word.  After  devastating  the  Debating  Society  with 
proposals  for  disembowelling  kings  or  strangling  priests,  I  have 
gone  back  to  my  study  and  duly  thrashed  some  junior  who 
forewent  the  age-old  custom  of  walking  bareheaded  past 
Burgess's  house.  Never  once  dared  I  stand  up  to  the  conven- 
tional, "Thou  shalt  not  brag.  Thou  shalt  not  not  affect  an  in- 
terest in  thy  work.  Thy  neighbours'  likes  and  dislikes  shall  be 
thine."  The  list  could  be  extended  indefinitely,  and  for  ten 
years  after  leaving  Melton  I  was  to  find  those  queer  school- 
boy limitations  and  inconsistencies  reproduced  throughout  the 
governing  class  in  England.  "One  must  pay  a  cardsharper," 
says  Tolstoi,  in  describing  Vronsky's  code  of  principles,  "but 
need  not  pay  a  tailor  .  .  .  one  must  never  tell  a  lie  to  a  man, 
but  one  may  to  a  woman  .  .  .  one  must  never  cheat  anyone, 
but  one  may  a  husband;  .  .  .  one  must  never  pardon  an  in- 
sult, but  one  may  give  one,  and  so  on." 

In  moments  of  uncritical  pride  I  judge  the  tree  by  its  fruit. 
It  is  the  public  school  men,  grumbling  at  their  work,  who — 
shall  we  say? — govern  the  Indian  Empire,  with  resentment  of 
praise  from  others  and  no  thoughts  of  praising  themselves. 
Versatile,  light-hearted  and  infinitely  resourcesful  if  cholera 
sweep  the  land,  they  will  step  from  one  dead  man's  shoes  to 
another's  and  leave  a  village  to  govern  a  province.  Haggard 
and  drawn  with  long  weeks  of  eighteen-hour  days,  they  will 
yet  find  time  to  mistrust  the  man  who  is  not  of  their  race  or 
speech  or  school  and  growl  at  him  who  offends  by  his  clothes 


7  8  SONIA 

or  enthusiasm  or  aspirates.  And  the  Indian  Empire  goes 
afresh  to  perdition  with  every  new  fall  in  the  rupee  or  change  in 
the  colour  of  the  Government  minute  paper.  In  moments  of 
pride  I  think  of  the  unwritten  law,  "Thou  shalt  never  let  a  man 
down" :  it  is  the  breath  of  the  public  school  spirit.  Yet  criti- 
cism tells  me  that  the  public  school's  have  no  monopoly,  and, 
if  one  miner  be  unjustly  discharged  from  employment,  a  hun- 
dred thousand  of  his  fellows  will  come  out  on  strike. 

"What  good  has  Melton  done  you?"  Loring  blandly  re- 
peated. 

In  his  mood  of  mockery  I  could  not  speak  of  my  opal- 
tinted  dreams,  my  consciousness  that  Melton  and  Burgess  had 
inspired  me  with  a  hundred  visions  of  mankind  regenerated 
through  my  efforts.  At  eighteen  everything  seemed  so  easy: 
the  world  was  blind  but  not  selfish — except  for  the  high  and 
dry  Tories  who  were  to  be  quietly  put  out  of  the  way  if  they 
proved  obdurate ;  everyone  else  would  yield  to  reason — and  my 
eloquence. 

The  favourite  vision  was  a  crowded  meeting  swayed  to 
laughter  or  tears  or  passion  by  my  words — a  memory  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  last  public  speech  on  the  Armenian  atrocities.  At 
other  times  when  my  Irish  fluency  had  been  too  rudely  inter- 
rupted, I  pictured  myself  as  heir  to  Parnell's  heritage  of  mas- 
terful silence.  Cold,  inflexible,  contemptuous — I  had  seen  him 
in  Dublin  when  I  was  a  boy  of  seven,  and  externals  counted 
for  so  much  that  will-power  seemed  a  matter  of  compressed 
lips  and  folded  arms.  I  was  but  eighteen,  and  my  Radicalism 
a  matter  of  inheritance  rather  than  conviction.  It  took  years 
of  painful  disillusionment  to  discover  how  much  fanaticism  is 
required  to  shake  the  resolution  of  others ;  and  years  more  to 
find  how  completely  I  was  lacking  in  it.  One  morning,  when 
I  had  attempted  to  catch  the  Speaker's  eye  some  fourteen  times 
in  the  course  of  an  all-night  sitting,  I  walked  out  of  the  House 
and  spent  the  day  asleep  in  a  Turkish  bath ;  on  waking  I  re- 
called Burgess's  words,  "Not  for  thee  the  dust  of  the  arena, 
laddie."  The  superman  vision  was  at  last  dispelled. 

"Well,  I  had  a  dam*  good  time  there,"  I  said  to  Loring,  by 
way  of  closing  the  Melton  debate. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN     79 

In  common  with  many  others  Loring  drew  pleadings 
against  Radicalism  which  would  have  delighted  a  lawyer.  To 
begin  with,  there  were  no  such  people  as  Radicals — he  at  any 
rate  had  never  met  them.  The  professed  Radicals  of  his  ac- 
quaintance were  a  handful  of  mere  agitators,  misleading  a  too 
credulous  electorate  that  was  not  yet  fit  to  exercise  the  fran- 
chise ;  morally  the  Radical  party  was  negligible  because  its  sole 
ambition  was,  by  sheer  force  of  numbers,  to  take  away  any- 
thing anybody  had  got — he  for  one  would  never  acquiesce  in 
confiscation  merely  because  a  majority  voted  it.  Then  in  our 
arguments  I  would  confront  him  with  the  Will  of  the  People 
—for  some  strange  reason  only  capable  of  interpretation  by 
Radicals.  The  phrase  had  a  curious  hypnotic  effect  on  us 
both,  for  he  would  invariably  retaliate  with  the  statement  that 
the  sole  custodians  of  the  People's  Will  were  to  be  found  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  And  infallibly  we  would  both  lose  our 
tempers  over  the  first  Home  Rule  Bill. 

"At  heart  you're  quite  sound,"  he  was  good  enough  to  say 
on  this  occasion. 

On  reaching  London  we  drove  to  Loring  House,  where  I 
spent  the  night  before  crossing  to  Ireland.  A  month  later 
we  met  for  Horse  Show  week.  Loring  stayed  with  me,  and 
we  went  to  Dublin  together  to  join  the  Hunter-Oakleighs,  who 
were  cousins  of  mine  and  at  this  time  head  of  the  Catholic 
branch  of  the  family.  Half-way  through  September  I  put  in 
a  week  at  House  of  Steynes,  and  was  not  surprised  to  find 
that  Loring  had  included  my  cousin  Violet  in  the  party.  In 
the  first  week  of  October  we  returned  to  London,  picked  up 
Draycott,  who  had  spent  a  stifling  summer,  loose-tied  and  low- 
collared,  in  the  Quarter  Latin,  and  descended  upon  Oxford  to 
order  the  decoration  of  our  rooms. 

Draycott  had  been  banished  to  Old  Library,  to  his  present 
disgust  and  subsequent  reconciliation,  and  allotted  a  gloomy 
first-floor  set  which  for  the  next  three  years  was  the  scene 
of  "Planchette"  seances  and  roulette  parties.  Loring  and  I  had 
been  given  one  of  the  coveted  double  suites  in  Tom,  and  for 
the  length  of  an  afternoon  we  condemned  furniture  and  car- 
pets, issued  orders  to  a  deferential,  tired  upholsterer,  and  final- 


8o  SONIA 

ly  emerged  into  the  autumn  sunlight  of  the  Quad  with  a  feel- 
ing of  modest  triumph  that  there  would  be  few  rooms  in 
Oxford  to  compare  with  ours. 

On  the  following  Friday  we  made  our  first  informal  ap- 
pearance. 

Writing  after  sixteen  years  that  have  been  neither  unvaried 
nor  uneventful,  I  find  that  Oxford  lingers  in  my  memory  as 
an  adventure  never  before  experienced  even  in  my  first  days  at 
Melton,  never  afterwards  repeated  even  when  I  lived  first  in 
London,  or  fought  my  Wiltshire  elections,  or  entered  the  House. 
I  like  to  fill  a  fresh  pipe  and  lean  back  in  my  chair,  conjuring 
up  a  thousand  little  personal  scenes — of  no  importance  in  the 
world  to  anyone  but  myself :  my  first  Sunday  luncheon,  when 
I  was  the  guest  of  Jerry  Westermark,  and  if  the  rest  of  the 
company  were  third-year  men  like  him,  entitled  to  an  arm-chair 
by  the  fire  in  Junior  Common  Room.  The  first  luncheon  I  my- 
self gave  half-way  through  the  term,  my  anxiety  not  to  leave 
outout  even  one  of  my  new  friends,  and  my  anger  with  Crabtree 
of  Magdalen  who  invited  himself  at  the  last  moment  and  filled 
me  with  eleventh-hour  fears  that  the  food  would  run  short.  My 
first  "Grind,"  where  I  pocketed  ten  pounds  by  backing  Loring, 
who  won  the  race  at  the  price  of  a  broken  collar-bone.  My 
first  Commem.  when  I  lost  my  heart  to  Amy  Loring.  My  first 
appearance  in  the  schools  and  my  confounding  ad  hoc  knowl- 
edge of  St.  Paul's  journey.  My  first.  .  .  . 

It  is  always  the  first  impression  that  seems  to  endure 
longest,  but  there  were  friendships  I  made  and  lost  wherein 
I  can  fix  no  date.  Tom  Dainton,  over  the  way  at  Oriel, 
dropped  out  of  my  circle  some  time  or  other;  we  nodded 
on  meeting  at  the  Club,  and  each  would  invite  the  other's 
assistance  in  entertaining  his  relations,  but  a  day  came  when 
I  felt  unworthy  of  Tom's  earnest  and  muscular  Blues.  And 
I  have  no  doubt  he  shook  a  puzzled  head  over  the  "footlers" 
with  whom  I  had  cast  in  my  lot.  Equally  there  came  a  day 
when  I  found  myself  using  a  man's  Christian  name  for  the 
first  time,  and  the  last  piece  of  ice  drifted  out  to  sea. 

I  like  to  recreate  the  atmosphere  of  eager  activity,  of  new- 
won  freedom  and  approaching  maturity.  Six  years  at  Melton 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      81 

had  been  a  time  of  bells  and  chapels,  first  schools  and  roll-calls, 
compulsory  games  and  "Lights  Out" ;  at  Oxford  I  was  a  man, 
with  liberty  in  moderation  to  cut  lectures  and  private  hours, 
go  to  bed  when  I  liked,  organize  a  banquet  and  participate 
from  time  to  time  in  wholesale  destruction  of  property,  no  man 
saying  me  nay.  The  differences  were  great  enough  to  mask 
the  resemblances.  I  hardly  noticed  that  I  was  being  regulated 
by  a  new  House  Standard  with  more  than  Meltonian  ob- 
servance of  taboo  rules  and  caste  distinctions.  We  wore  no 
College  colours,  we  dressed  for  the  theatre,  and  the  "Rowing 
Push"  were  at  pains  not  to  know  the  "Footlers"  who  beagled 
or  hunted.  But  we  were  all  unconscious  and  in  deadly  earnest, 
whether  we  testified  to  our  abhorrence  to  Balliol,  or  walked  up 
Headington  Hill  and  back  by  Mesopotamia  discussing  the 
abolition  of  private  property  or  lounged  in  chairs  round  a 
piled-up  fire  talking  and  smoking — and,  for  variety,  smoking 
and  talking. 

Not  unless  I  die  and  be  born  again  shall  I  a  second  time 
know  the  joy  of  living  in  a  city  of  three  thousand  men,  all  of 
them  my  soul's  friends — save  such  as  came  from  other  colleges 
or  the  despised  quarters  of  my  own. 

"Oakum,  come  and  talk  to  me !" 

I  can  still  hear  the  voice  echoing  through  the  morning 
silence  of  Peck,  still  see  a  foreshortened  face,  chin  on  hands, 
and  white  teeth  gripping  a  straight-grained  pipe. 

"Hallo,  Geoffrey!     D'you  think  I  could  get  one  of  your 
windows  ?" 

"Better  not  try !" 

There  is  a  pause  in  the  dialogue  while  I  kick  up  a  handful 
of  small  stones  and  leap  nimbly  away  from  the  siphon  which 
Geoffrey  Hale  has  just  stolen  from  Rawbones,  his  neighbor 
across  the  landing,  and  shattered  in  a  thousand  pieces  not 
three  feet  from  where  I  stand.  A  stone  rises. 

"Poor  shooting !"  from  Geoffrey. 

My  next  aim  is  better,  and  there  is  the  sharp  musical  note 
of  broken  glass.  Thirty  heads  projecting  over  thirty  flower- 
boxes  chant  in  chorus,  "Porter-r-r !  Mr.  Oakleigh !"  while  I 
abandon  dignity  and  hasten  to  the  nearest  staircase,  to  the  end 


82  SONIA 

that  one  broken  window  may  be  distributed  throughout  the 
College  and  charged  to  "General  Damage  Account."  Raw- 
bones  will  bear  the  undivided  charges  of  his  siphon. 

In  the  early  months  of  the  war  I  had  occasion  to  spend  a 
few  hours  in  Oxford.  The  colleges  were  filled  with  soldiers 
and  the  Schools  had  been  turned  into  a  hospital,  while  Belgian 
refugees  looked  unfamiliarly  down  from  the  choicest  rooms 
in  St.  Aldates  or  the  High.  It  was  the  Oxford  of  a  nightmare, 
but,  though  I  saw  no  more  than  a  dozen  undergraduates 
throughout  the  city,  there  was  hardly  college  or  shop  or  house 
that  did  not  hold  the  spirit  of  a  man  I  had  known.  Ghostly, 
muffled  rowing  men  still  ran  through  the  Meadows  in  the 
gathering  dusk  of  a  winter  afternoon;  ghostly  scholars  on 
bicycles,  with  tattered  gowns  wrapped  round  their  necks  and 
square  notebooks  clutched  precariously  under  their  arms,  shot 
tinkling  under  the  very  wheels  of  the  sempiternal  horse-trams ; 
ghostly  hunting  men,  mud-splashed  and  weary,  cracked  con- 
scientious whips  in  the  middle  of  the  Quad.  At  six-and-thirty 
the  elasticity  and  abandon  are  gone,  but  I  would  give  much  to 
shout  one  more  conversation  from  one  drawing-room  window 
to  another,  to  spend  an  hour  pouring  hot  sealing-wax  into  the 
keyhole  of  a  neighbor's  oak,  to  deck  a  life-size  Apollo  Bel- 
vedere in  cap  and  gown  and  deposit  him  in  Draycott's  bed. 
The  power  and  daring  have  left  me,  but  I  thank  Heaven  that 
the  wish  remains. 

On  the  first  day  Loring  and  I  advanced  silently  and  with 
sudden  shyness  through  Tom  Gate.  The  knots  of  men  in 
lodge  or  street  were  embarrassingly  preoccupied  and  indiffer- 
ent to  us.  Never  had  I  imagined  that  the  great  personalities 
of  a  public  school  could  count  for  so  little.  "The  Earl  of 
Chepstow ;  Mr.  G.  Oakleigh,"  picked  out  in  white  on  a  black 
ground,  reminded  us  reassuringly  that  we  too  had  a  stake 
in  the  College,  but  for  an  hour  we  were  well  content  to  arrange 
our  books  and  experiment  with  the  ordering  of  our  furniture, 
deliberately  shrinking  from  an  appearance  in  public  until  the 
time  came  for  us  to  present  ourselves  to  the  Dean.  In  Hall, 
and  on  our  way  to  be  admitted  by  the  Vice-Chancellor,  we 
fell  in  with  other  Meltonians  and  offered  the  effusive  friend- 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN  ,    83 

ship  of  loneliness  to  men  perhaps  previously  ignored.  Here 
and  there  I  met  someone  I  had  not  seen  since  private-school 
days.  Once  the  alliance  was  formed  under  stress  of  agglomer- 
ation, we  spent  the  remainder  of  the  afternoon  in  a  serried 
mass  inspecting  each  other's  rooms,  ordering  wine,  tobacco  and 
bedroom  ware  in  the  town  and  at  tea-time  valorously  ventur- 
ing into  the  Junior  Common  Room. 

Within  the  next  two  days  Loring  and  I  received  a  number 
of  cards,  unceremoniously  doled  out  by  a  messenger  in  short- 
sighted communion  with  a  manuscript  list  of  all  freshmen 
worth  knowing,  as  compiled  by  an  informal  committee  of 
second  and  third  year  men.  A  number  of  Athletic  Secretaries 
wrung  from  us  promises  of  conditional  allegiance  which  we 
were  too  timorous  to  withhold,  and  our  respective  tutors  pro- 
pounded what  lectures  and  private  hours  we  were  to  attend. 
Within  a  week  we  had  returned  many  of  the  calls,  ceremoni- 
ously and  in  person,  returning  a  second  and  third  time  if  our 
host  were  not  at  home;  breakfast  invitations  began  to  be 
bandied  about,  and  the  Clubs  in  search  of  new  members  ex- 
amined our  eligibility. 

As  the  one  Liberal  in  a  room  full  of  silent  Imperialists 
who  consumed  surprising  quantities  of  dessert  and  paid  no  at- 
tention to  the  debate  beyond  applauding  perfunctorily  at  the 
end  of  each  oration,  I  remember  impassionately  harranguing 
the  "Twenty  Club"  on  the  unreasonableness  of  Chamber- 
lain's attitude  towards  President  Kruger.  At  the  "Mermaids," 
where  the  consumption  of  food  and  drink  was  even  greater,  I 
read  the  part  of  "Charles  Surface" ;  nay,  more,  in  a  burst  of 
enthusiasm  I  perpetrated  a  paper  on  "Irish  Music"  for  the 
Essay  Club,  in  those  days  a  despised  and  persecuted  church 
not  infrequently  screwed  up  in  the  catacombs  of  Meadow 
Buildings  and  left  to  support  life  on  coffee,  walnut  cake,  pure 
reason  and  some  astonishingly  rich  Lowland  dialects.  Liberal- 
ism burned  flickeringly  in  the  autumn  of  '99,  and  the  Univer- 
sity Liberal  clubs  contended  with  flattering  rivalry  for  my  un- 
resisting and  largely  uninterested  body. 

The  term  was  still  young  when  Loring  was  elected  a 
members  of  the  Loders,  and  soon  afterwards  he  joined  the 


84  SONIA 

Bullingdon.  As  he  now  dined  at  the  Club  table  in  Hall,  I 
gathered  Draycott  and  Mowbray,  a  Wykehamist  named  Finck- 
Boynton  and  two  Etonians,  Bertie  Grainger  and  Mark  Seton, 
and  founded  a  mess  next  to  the  Guest  Table,  whence  we 
could  throw  bread  at  almost  any  friend  in  Hall.  There  we  sat 
and  criticized  the  kitchen,  the  High  Table  and  our  neighbors, 
decided  a  hundred  knotty  points  of  conduct  and  elaborated  a 
pose  which  should  mark  us  out  as  men  of  originality,  fearless- 
ness and  distinction  without  any  of  the  distressing  immaturity 
of  mind  betrayed  by  our  fellow-freshmen. 

In  looking  back  on  the  early  days  I  find  something  very 
ingenuous  and  engaging  in  our  delusion  of  originality. 
Whether  we  ragged  the  rooms  of  the  meek,  hysterical  Ains- 
worth  (who  was  alleged  to  hold  private  prayer-meetings  and 
intercede  by  name  for  the  souls  of  lost  undergraduates), 
whether  we  serenaded  Greatorex,  the  mathematical  tutor,  on 
the  night  he  had  a  Colonial  Bishop  staying  with  him,  whether 
we  established  an  informal  breakfast  club  at  the  Clarendon 
because  we  could  get  no  hot  food  in  College  on  Sundays,  we 
were  soberly  and  seriously  convinced  that  earlier  generations 
had  never  thought  of  doing  such  things  before.  For  three 
years  I  watched  with  mild  exasperation  three  successive  drafts 
of  amazingly  juvenile  men  clumsily  aping  the  achievements 
of  us,  their  seniors. 

New  prejudices  grew  to  a  rank  birth,  but  one  or  two  old 
convictions  came  to  be  shaken.  I  no  longer  looked  on  Eton 
as  a  forcing-house  of  ineffective  snobbery,  nor  on  Winchester 
as  the  home  of  well-bred,  uniform  inertia;  I  ceased  to  say 
that  while  one  Carthusian  was  occasionally  tolerable,  more 
than  one  would  dominate  and  scatter  the  most  varied  society; 
gradually  I  found  that  something  might  be  said  even  for  men 
who  had  never  been  to  a  public  school.  Loring  shook  his  head 
in  puzzled  and  not  entirely  affected  disapproval  of  my  social 
adventures  and,  though  punctiliously  courteous  to  my  guests, 
would  not  infrequently  condemn  them  categorically  as 
"stumers"  when  they  were  gone. 

Yet  on  reflection  I  learned  more  of  men  and  books  from  a 
reserved  and  aggressively  sensitive  colony  of  young  Scotch 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      85 

graduates  than  from  many  a  more  decorative  sect  in  the  first- 
floor  rooms  of  Canterbury.  McBain,  a  threadbare  Aber- 
donian,  would  drift  in  on  a  Sunday  night,  when  Loring  was 
away  dining  with  the  Loders,  and  we  would  sit  till  the  small 
hours  talking  of  Renan  and  a  non-miraculous  Christianity. 
Frazar,  who  was  taking  the  Modern  Language  School,  would 
lie  back  sipping  whisky  and  filling  the  grate  with  half-smoked 
cigarettes  as  he  talked  of  life  at  the  Sorbonne  and  the  wonder- 
ful appreciation  of  modern  French  poetry  that  he  would  one 
day  publish.  Carmichael,  an  embittered,  one-idea  reolution- 
ary,  would  throw  Marx  at  my  head  and  give  fierce  descriptions 
of  his  Board-school  struggles  before  a  scholarship  set  him 
free  to  peddle  his  brains  in  the  market  on  equal  terms  with 
his  fellows.  At  Melton  we  seemed  all  drawn  from  one  class, 
brought  up  in  the  same  channels  of  thought,  given  the  same 
books  to  read. 

When  educational  reformers  fill  "The  Times"  with  their 
screeds,  I  am  tempted  to  wonder  whether  it  much  matters 
what  a  man  be  taught  so  long  as  he  meet  enough  men  who 
have  been  taught  something  else.  I  worked  hard  at  Oxford 
and  did  tolerably  well  in  the  Schools :  perhaps  they  taught  me 
how  to  learn,  but  the  gaps  in  my  knowledge  when  I  came 
down  make  me  look  on  the  curriculum  as  "a  chaos  upheld  by 
Providence."  And  then  I  think  of  three  thousand  men  from 
a  hundred  schools  and  a  thousand  homes,  flung  behind  the 
enchanted,  crumbling  walls  to  bring  their  theories,  ethics, 
enthusiasms  and  limitations  into  the  common  stock;  and  at 
such  times  I  wonder  what  better  schooling  a  Royal  Commis- 
sion could  secure  for  the  plastic  imagination  of  nineteen. 

For  all  our  poses  Oxford  gave  us  a  taste  of  that  world 
in  which  most  of  us  were  to  pass  our  lives — an  obsolete, 
artificial,  inadequate  world  if  you  will,  but  the  one  wherein 
we  had  to  find  social  and  administrative  salvation.  We  felt 
the  heavy  democratic  control  of  public  opinion  when  the 
notoriety-hunting  Glynne  was  ducked  in  Mercury  for  giving 
luncheons  in  his  rooms  to  the  too-well-known  Gracie  (I  never 
discovered  her  surname)  from  the  florists  in  the  Broad;  we 
saw  something  of  the  ideal  Equality  of  Opportunity  when 


86  SONIA 

Carmichael  went  from  a  scholarship  to  a  fellowship  and  then 
to  a  provincial  Professorship  of  Economics  and  ultimately  to 
an  exalted  position  in,  I  think,  the  Board  of  Education;  by 
the  College  cliques  and  fashions,  the  social  mistrust  and  jeal- 
ousies, the  canons  and  taboos,  we  were  in  some  sort  fore- 
armed against  the  absurdities,  the  unworthiness  and  irre- 
concilabilities that  awaited  us  outside  Oxford. 

A  fruitful  lesson  of  my  first  term  was  furnished  by  the 
Duke  of  Flint.  He  was  a  freshman,  an  Etonian,  a  "Gourmet" 
and  a  member  of  the  Bullingdon.  Any  week  in  which  he  was 
drunk  less  than  five  times  was  no  ordinary  week ;  any  story 
that  could  be  repeated  in  decent  company  was  not  from  his 
hiccoughing  lips.  Without  question  the  most  unmitigated 
degenerate  I  have  ever  met,  the  sole  excuse  to  be  made  for 
him  was  that  by  inheritance  his  blood  was  sufficiently  tainted 
to  infect  a  dozen  generations.  Yet  I  cannot  think  it  was  in 
a  spirit  of  commiseration  that  Oxford  took  the  little  ruffian 
to  its  bosom,  inviting  him  to  its  luncheons  and  electing  him 
to  its  clubs;  there  was  something  at  once  shamefaced  and 
defiant  in  the  way  his  friends  proclaimed — without  challange 
— that  he  was  "not  at  all  a  bad  fellow,  really;  rather  fun, 
in  fact."  From  the  night  when  he  staggered  down  the  High 
in  the  purple  dress  coat  of  the  "Gourmets,"  breaking  the 
shop  windows  with  his  bare  hand  and  I  bound  him  up  and 
put  him  to  bed,  to  the  day  not  many  weeks  ago  when  he 
died  of  general  paralysis,  I  watched  his  social  career  with 
interest. 

We  none  of  us  had  much  time  for  introspection  in  those 
eager,  early  days.  I  was  swearing  rapid  friendships,  eating 
aldermanic  banquets  and  conscientiously  flitting  from  one 
to  another  of  my  new  clubs  with  the  zeal  of  a  neophyte  and 
the  greed  of  a  man  who  knows  that  after  the  dull,  inadequate 
dinner  of  Hall  an  unlimited  dessert  awaits  him.  Loring  and 
I  had  refused  to  compete  for  the  Melton  close  scholarships, 
as  the  money  was  not  essential  to  us,  and  we  could  now  idle 
for  a  twelvemonth  over  Pass  Mods,  and  leave  three  serious 
years  for  our  final  schools.  A  minimum  of  lectures  satisfied 
our  tutors,  and  the  rest  of  the  time  we  could  argue  and  read 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      87 

and  smoke  eternally  new  and  expensive  mixtures,  which  we 
backed  against  all  comers  and  changed  perhaps  thrice  in  a 
term. 

Once  I  came  near  my  sole  acquaintance  with  martyrdom. 
It  was  in  the  early  weeks  of  the  South  African  War,  when  to 
be  a  pro-Boer  was  not  healthy.  The  wholeness  of  my  skin 
and  the  peace  of  our  rooms  were  due  in  equal  measure  to 
the  fact  that  I  had  many  friends  and  that  those  who  knew 
me  not  agreed  with  Loring  that  I  could  not  really  mean  what 
I  said.  My  fellow-rebel  Manders,  who  knew  no  one  and  only 
left  his  garret  in  Meadows  to  bicycle  hotly  round  outlying 
Oxfordshire  villages  preaching  sedition,  was  incontinently  di- 
vested of  his  trousers  and  hurled  into  Mercury. 

"These  damned  farmers!"  Loring  exclaimed,  as  he  re- 
turned to  our  rooms,  leaving  Manders  to  retrieve  his  spectacles 
and  wade  inshore.  "They've  got  to  be  taught  a  lesson." 

"It'll  cost  you  a  hundred  million  pounds,"  I  answered. 
"God  knows  how  many  men.  And  all  because  the  said 
farmers  claim  the  right  to  keep  their  own  territory  to  them- 
selves." 

"A  hundred  million  pounds !"  he  snorted. 

"Thats'  what  Labouchere  said  the  other  night  in  the 
House,"  I  retorted,  with  an  undergraduate's  faith  in  the 
figures  and  opinions  of  others. 

"Oh,  of  course,  if  you  believe  a  man  like  that!  A  man 
who  frankly  doesn't  believe  in  the  Empire.  A  Little  Eng- 
lander  .  .  ." 

"I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  he  was  right,"  I  said. 

"Just  for  a  few  pounds  you'd  rather  like  to  see  us  beaten," 
he  cried.  To  this  hour  I  recall  with  amazement  the  passions 
aroused  by  that  war. 

"I'm  not  in  favour  of  a  war  against  a  free  people  con- 
ducted on  behalf  of  Illicit  Diamond  Buyers.  Besides  the  few 
pounds  there  are  men's  lives — and  a  little  question  of  right  and 
wrong." 

"You  ought  to  support  your  country  right  or  wrong." 

"I  beg  to  differ,"  I  said,  and  we  carried  the  discussion 
heatedly  back  to  Majuba  and  the  question  whether  or  no 


88  SONIA 

Mr.  Gladstone's  body  should  be  exhumed  and  hung  in  chains. 

The  war  was  to  come  very  near  home  before  many  weeks 
had  passed.  After  Black  Friday,  Roger  Dainton  raised  a 
troop  of  horse  and  took  them  out;  Tom  Dainton  was  given 
a  university  coumission  and  followed  a  few  weeks  later. 
In  the  Easter  term  "The  Earl  of  Chepstow"  was  painted  out 
and  "The  Marquess  Loring"  substituted.  The  "damned  farm- 
ers" had  added  a  very  pleasant,  easy-going,  undistinguished 
man  to  the  lengthening  list  of  casualties. 


rv 


To  men  of  my  generation,  men  who  are  now  in  the  middle 
thirties,  the  South  African  War  marked  the  end  of  many 
things.  I  can  just  remember,  as  a  child  of  six,  the  fall  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  third  administration.  We  were  in  Ireland 
at  the  time,  and  my  father,  a  few  months  before  his  death, 
burst  into  the  dining-room  with  a  paper  in  his  hand,  his  face 
white  and  drawn  with  disappointment.  I  can  still  recall  his  tone 
as  he  said,  "We're  beaten !"  After  that,'  though  I  was  grow- 
ing older,  I  seemed  to  hear  little  of  politics.  The  excitement 
of  the  Parnell  Commission  came  to  be  drowned  in  the  more 
sinister  excitement  of  the  Divorce.  I  remember  remotely  and 
indistinctly,  fighting  a  young  opponent  at  my  private  school 
over  the  rejection  of  the  second  Home  Rule  Bill ;  two  years 
later  Liberalism  went  behind  a  cloud,  the  Liberal  Unionists 
came  in  welcomed  and  desired,  and  almost  immediately — as  it 
seemed — we  were  busy  preparing  for  the  Diamond  Jubilee. 

One  thing  that  the  Boer  War  ended  was  the  Jubilee  phase, 
the  Victorian  position  of  England  in  the  world.  Seated  at  a 
first-floor  window  half-way  up  Ludgate  Hill,  I  watched  the 
little  old  Queen  driving  to  the  service  of  thanksgiving  at  St. 
Paul's  escorted  by  troops  drawn  from  every  quarter  of  the 
globe.  The  blaze  of  their  uniforms  has  not  yet  quite  died 
from  my  eyes.  I  awoke  with  quickly  beating  heart  to  some 
conception  of  the  Empire  over  which  she  ruled,  some  realiza- 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      89 

tion  of  the  gigantic  growth  in  our  wealth  and  power  during 
the  two  generations  that  she  had  sat  the  throne.  There  fol- 
lowed the  Naval  Review.  It  was  as  though  we  flung  a  mailed 
gauntlet  in  the  face  of  anyone  who  should  venture  to  doubt 
our  supremacy.  For  more  than  two  years  after  that  England 
basked  in  the  consciousness  of  invincibility. 

The  early  months  of  humiliation  and  disaster  ended  my 
generation's  boyhood.  Until  that  time  there  had  been  nothing 
to  disturb  us ;  the  splendour  of  our  national  might  seemed  en- 
during, and  it  needed  the  severest  of  our  first  Transvaal  re- 
verses to  remind  us  that  the  Jubilee  pageant  was  over  and  our 
lath-and-plaster  reputation  being  tested  by  fire  and  steel.  Tom 
Dainton  invited  me  to  a  solitary  breakfast  on  Sunday  and 
mentioned  his  father's  decision  to  raise  a  troop  of  yeomanry. 
We  made  inquiries  about  the  university  commissions  that 
were  being  granted,  and,  though  I  was  rejected  for  shortness 
of  sight,  Tom  passed  with  triumphant  ease  and  dropped  out  of 
Oxford  for  more  than  two  years.  At  the  end  of  the  Christmas 
vacation  came  the  news  of  Lord  Loring's  death.  Possibly  be- 
cause his  son  and  I  were  living  together,  possibly  by  the  shock 
of  contrast  with  the  peaceful,  untroubled  life  we  had  led  for- 
merly, the  war  cloud  loomed  oppressively  over  me  during  my 
first  year,  so  that  the  ordinary  existence  in  college  seemed 
curiously  artificial.  We  might  have  been  playing  in  some  in- 
different show  at  a  country  fair,  with  passers-by  who  refused 
to  interest  themselves  in  us.  After  a  year  the  country's  pros- 
pects in  the  war  began  to  brighten;  we  grew  used  to  the 
casualty  lists  and  masterly  retreats ;  the  centre  of  gravity 
changed,  and  Oxford  began  to  resume  her  normal  life. 

At  the  end  of  my  third  year  we  were  to  have  the  unusual 
sight  of  men,  who  had  been  away  fighting  for  two  years  or 
more  in  another  continent,  returning  to  resume  their  position 
as  undergraduate.  I  was  spending  the  beginning  of  the 
Long  Vacation  with  Loring  at  Chepstow,  when  we  received 
a  wire  inviting  us  both  to  Crowley  Court  to  welcome  the  two 
Daintons  back  from  the  Front.  Neither  Loring  nor  I  had 
been  to  Hampshire  since  leaving  Melton,  and,  as  Mrs.  Dainton 
pledged  herself  that  "all  the  old  party"  would  be  invited,  we 


90  SONIA 

accepted  with  alacrity.  Sutcliffe,  who  was  doing  a  vacation 
course  at  Cambridge,  broke  into  his  work  to  join  us,  and 
Draycott  was  on  the  platform  when  we  arrived  at  Waterloo. 

I  remember — though  it  is  a  petty  enough  thing  to  recall — 
rather  resenting  Draycott's  presence.  He  had  got  into  a  set 
that  I  disliked — a  set  that  was,  I  suppose,  "at  once  as  old 
and  new  as  time  itself."  Its  members  went  exquisitely  dressed 
in  coats  of  many  colours ;  they  made  a  considerable  to-do  with 
crossings  and  genuflections  in  chapel,  and  private  shrines  and 
incense  in  their  bedrooms.  They  also  introduced  an  unneces- 
sary V  into  "Catholic"  and  "Mass,"  largely,  I  think,  with 
a  view  of  frightening  the  parents  who  had  reared  them  in  the 
straitest  sect  of  Protestantism.  If  you  dropped  in  on  any  one 
of  them  at  any  hour  of  the  afternoon,  you  would  be  assailed 
with  exotic  hospitality — Turkish  coffee,  Tokay,  Dutch  curacao, 
black  Spanish  cigarettes,  Uraguayan  mate,  Greek  resined  wine 
and  a  drink  which  to  this  day  I  assert  to  be  sulphuric  acid 
and  which  my  offended  host  assured  me  was  a  priceless 
aperitif  unobtainable  outside  Thibet  or  the  French  Congo.  In 
college  it  was  said  vaguely  that  they  knew  "all  about  Art"; 
they  certainly  had  a  pretty  taste  in  bear-skins,  Persian  rugs 
and  the  more  self-indulgent  style  of  upholstery.  If  their  nude, 
plaster  statuettes  were  once  decently  petticoated  in  blotting 
paper  annexed  from  the  old  Lecture  Room,  I  suppose 
they  were  so  clothed  a  hundred  times,  until  Roger  Porlick  dis- 
graced himself  in  Eights  Week  by  punting  up  the  Cher  with  a 
stark  hamadyrad  tethered  as  a  mascot  to  the  box  of  his  punt. 
After  that  the  plaster  casts  were  hidden. 

Once  deprived  of  his  audience,  Draycott  had  either  to  drop 
his  pose  or  explain  it  elaborately  to  friends  who  had  known 
him  before  its  adoption.  He  chose  the  easier  course,  and  we 
very  comfortably  renewed  the  life,  relations  and  atmosphere 
we  had  left  behind  at  Crowley  Court  three  years  before.  The 
party  assembled  piecemeal,  as  O'Rane  had  to  wait  till  the  end 
of  the  Melton  term,  and  our  hosts  spent  some  days  at  the 
War  Office  before  they  were  restored  to  their  family. 

On  the  eve  of  Speech  Day  Mrs.  Dainton  suggested  that  I 
should  drive  over  to  Melton  and  bring  O'Rane  back  with  me. 


In  the  absence  of  her  husband  she  had  gratified  a  cherished 
aspiration  by  purchasing  a  motor-car,  and  this  was  placed  at 
my  disposal.  In  the  old  days  Roger  Dainton,  who  had  been 
brought  up  among  horses  from  boyhood,  declare4  roundly  that 
nothing  would  induce  him  to  invest  in  a  "noisy,  smelly,  terror- 
by-day"  that  made  life  unbearable  for  peaceful  pedestrians 
in  the  rare  moments  when  it  was  not  breaking  down  and  being 
pushed  or  pulled  ignominiously  home. 

"He's  an  absurd  old  Tory,"  Mrs.  Dainton  told  me.  "Every- 
body's getting  one  nowadays;  Lord  Pebbleridge,  over  at 
Bishop's  Cross,  has  three." 

So  in  imitation  of  her  august  neighbour,  a  car  was  bought. 
It  was  one  of  several  small  changes  that  the  long-suffering 
Roger  found  waiting  to  be  inflicted  on  him:  dinner  had  been 
put  back  to  a  quarter-past  eight  and  was  now  served  by  a 
butler  and  two  footmen;  to  hang  about  the  grounds  till  8.20 
was  no  longer  admitted  as  a  valid  excuse  for  not  dressing. 

As  soon  as  I  promised  to  drive  over  to  the  school,  Sonia 
announced  her  intention  of  accompanying  me.  For  a  year 
or  two  O'Rane  had  been  something  of  a  public  character  in 
Melton,  and  with  Sam  to  bring  her  news  of  him  in  the  holidays, 
she  had  not  lacked  the  material  of  that  hero-worship  in  which 
all  girls  of  fifteen  appear  to  indulge.  O'Rane  liked  his  sym- 
pathetic audience  as  well  as  another  man,  and  the  two  were 
good  friends.  On  Leave-Out  Days  he  would  pace  the  South- 
ampton road  dreaming,  as  Napoleon  may  have  dreamed  at 
eighteen,  his  wild,  romantic  vision  steadied  and  kept  in 
focus  by  the  consciousness  of  his  own  proved  endurance  and 
concentration.  Sonia  would  meet  him  and  trot  patiently 
alongside  while  he  cried  to  the  rolling  heavens.  Then  and 
now  I  felt  and  feel  a  strange  embarrassment  in  hearing  him : 
he  was  so  unrestrained  and  lacking  in  conventional  self- 
consciousness  that  my  skin  pricked  with  a  sudden  infectious 
emotion  which  I  tried  to  suppress.  He  reminded  me  of  a 
great  actor  in  everyday  clothes  declaiming  Shakespeare  in 
a  fashionable  drawing-room.  At  this  time  the  only  two  souls 
on  earth  who  believed  in  the  reality  of  his  dreams  were  Sonia 
and— the  dreamer, 


92  SONIA 

We  panted  and  clanked  through  the  Forest,  pulled  up  by 
the  roadside  to  let  the  boiling  water  in  our  radiator  cool  down 
and  finally  arrived  at  Big  Gateway  as  the  school  came  out  of 
Chapel  and  wandered  up  and  down  Great  Court  waiting  for 
Roll  Call.  We  watched  Burgess  coming  out  of  Cloisters  and 
through  the  Archway,  struggling  with  gown  and  hood,  stole 
and  surplice,  all  rolled  into  a  tubular  bundle  and  flung  over  one 
shoulder  like  a  military  overcoat. 

"What  went  ye  forth  for  to  see,  laddie?"  he  inquired,  as 
we  shook  hands.  "A  reed  shaken  by  the  wind?" 

"We've  come  to  take  O'Rane  away  with  us,  sir,"  I  an- 
swered. 

He  sighed  pensively,  and,  as  he  shook  his  head,  the  breeze 
played  with  his  silky  white  hair. 

"Canst  thou  find  no  ram  taken  by  his  horns  in  a  thicket?" 
he  demanded. 

"What  sort  of  captain  did  he  make,  sir?"  I  asked. 

Burgess  stroked  his  long  beard  and  looked  from  me  to 
Sonia  and  back  again  to  me. 

"Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this,"  he  said,  "that  a 
man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends.  He  is  an  austere  man, 
yet  reapeth  not  that  he  did  not  sow,  neither  gathereth  he  up 
that  he  did  not  straw.  And  at  the  sound  of  his  voice  the 
young  men  will  leave  all  and  follow  him  even  to  the  isles 
of  Javan  and  Gadire."  He  paused  till  the  bell  for  Roll  Call 
had  finished  ringing.  "Nicodemus,  come  and  see." 

Sonia  and  I  squeezed  our  way  in  among  two  or  three 
hundred  parents  who  had  profited  by  proximity  to  the  Head 
to  inquire  how  'Bernard'  had  fared  that  term ;  the  giant 
intellect  of  Burgess  we  left  to  discover  unaided  who  'Bernard' 
might  be.  We  listened  to  the  Prize  Compositions,  the  Hon- 
ours of  the  year,  and  the  removes  of  the  term.  Then  Sonia's 
hand  slipped  through  my  arm,  and  her  brown  eyes  sud- 
denly softened.  The  prizes  were  being  distributed,  and  we 
watched  and  listened  until  I,  at  any  rate,  grew  sore-handed 
and  weary  of  hearing  O'Rane's  name  called  out.  I  began, 
too,  to  pity  the  fags  who  would  have  to  stagger  across  Great 
Court  under  the  growing  burden  of  that  calf -bound,  gilt- 


93 

edged  pile.  He  himself  went  through  the  ceremony  in  a  dis- 
pirited, listless  fashion,  his  thoughts  running  forward  to  the 
moment  when  he  would  have  to  reverse  the  birch  and  hand, 
it  back  to  Burgess,  while  the  new  captain  slipped  into  his 
seat  and  read  prayers  over  his  body. 

"In  nomine  Patris,  et  Filii  et  Spiritus  Sancti.  I  should 
like  all  boys  who  are  leaving  this  term  to  say  good-bye  to 
me  in  my  house.  Ire  licet." 

The  school  poured  out  into  Great  Court  and  formed  up 
in  a  double  line.  O'Rane  was  cheered  from  School  Steps 
to  the  Head's  house,  as  no  one  to  my  knowledge  had  been 
cheered  since  Pelham  gave  up  his  house  and  retired  after 
forty-three  years.  The  Leaving  Books  were  handed  out, — 
still  "Men  and  Women"  as  in  my  day, — the  last  hand-shakes 
exchanged.  Outside  the  library  windows  the  school  was 
waiting  for  O'Rane's  reappearance. 

"Be  not  overmuch  puffed  up  with  pride,  laddie,"  said 
Burgess,  when  they  were  alone.  "Boy  is  a  creature  of  simple 
faith  and  easy  enthusiasm.  True,  in  thine  youth  thou  wast 
clept  'Spitfire'  and  The  Vengeful  Celt'- " 

"Sir  .   .  .  ?" 

Burgess  waved  away  the  interruption.  "Did  I  not  tell 
thee  of  the  Unsleeping  Eye?  Laddie,  I  am  old  and  broken 
with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  this  life,  yet  it  may  be  that 
the  counsel  of  age  may  profit  a  young  man.  Yet  not  with 
thee.  To  thee  I  say  not,  'Do  this'  or  'Do  that';  there  is 
nought  thou  canst  not  do,  laddie — thou  also  art  among  the 
prophets."  He  held  out  his  hand  abruptly,  and  O'Rane 
took  it. 

"Sir,  I  want  to  thank  you  .   .  ."he  began. 

"For  that  I  forbade  thee  not  when  thou  didst  crave 
admittance  ?" 

"A  thousand  things  beside  that,  sir.    Everything  ..." 

"The  fatherless  child  is  in  God's  keeping,  laddie,"  said 
Burgess  gently,  disengaging  his  hand.  "And  thy  father  and 
I  were  young  men  together.  Thou  didst  know  this  thing?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Yet  thou  namedst  it  not?" 


94  SONIA 

O'Rane  hesitated  and  then  burst  out  with  a  touch  of  his 
old  universal  defiance. 

"I  wanted  to  make  you  take  me  on  my  merits,  sir." 

"Hard  is  the  way  of  him  who  would  presume  to  offer 
help  to  David  O'Rane!"  Burgess  answered,  with  a  shake  of 
the  head. 

"But  I'd  won  through  so  far,  sir;  I  wanted  to  see  how 
much  longer " 

"I  blame  thee  not,  laddie.  Well,  thou  hast  endured  to 
the  end  and  hast  brought  new  honour  to  my  kingdom. 
Counsel  I  withhold  from  thee:  truly  the  Lord  will  provide. 
Fare  thee  well,  David  O'Rane." 

On  our  way  back  to  Crowley  Court  I  put  Raney  outside, 
in  case  he  preferred  the  company  of  his  own  thoughts  for 
the  present.  He  sat  for  a  few  moments  with  his  chin  on  his 
chest,  but  as  the  car  left  the  town  he  engaged  the  chauffeur 
in  earnest  conversation,  and  as  we  slowed  down  in  front  of 
the  house  he  jumped  out  and  came  to  the  door  with  the 
words,  "Simpson  damns  electricity  and  steam.  He  swears 
by  oil.  Well,  if  cars  are  going  to  knock  out  horses  and  you 
need  petrol  to  drive  your  cars,  there's  going  to  be  a  tremen- 
dous demand  for  oil  in  the  near  future.  I  want  to  get  in  before 
the  rush,  I'm  going  to  study  oil " 

"You're  a  soulless  Wall  Street  punter,"  I  said. 

Twenty  minutes  before  he  had  been  saying  good-bye  to 
Melton  with  moist  eyes  and  unsteady  speech.  That  phase 
was  now  ancient  history,  and — characteristically  enough — he 
was  ready  to  fling  the  whole  blazing  vigour  of  his  vitality  into 
the  next. 

"Come  and  find  Mrs.  Dainton,"  I  suggested. 

"Jove !  I'd  quite  forgotten  about  her,"  was  his  ingenuous 
answer. 

Tom  and  his  father  arrived  that  evening  in  time  for  din- 
ner. We  fired  the  first  shot  with  our  soup  and,  when  Mrs. 
Dainton  and  Sonia  left  us,  we  were  still  fighting  out  the  big 
battles  with  dessert  knives,  nutcrackers  and  port;  glasses 
to  mark  the  positions.  Concentration  Camps  were  hotly 
canvassed  at  one  end  of  the  table,  soft-nosed  bullets  at  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      95 

other.  Sutcliffe,  who  was  rapidly  acquiring  the  White  Paper 
habit,  flung  out  disconcerting  dates  and  figures  at  the  more 
vulnerable  gaps  in  Dainton's  argument,  and  Draycott,  with 
a  bad  attack  of  paradox,  proved  to  his  own  satisfaction  that 
we  had  lost  the  war  and  alternately  that  no  war  had  taken 
place. 

"Well,  it's  all  over  now,"  said  Dainton,  as  the  decanter 
went  its  last  round.  "I  think  it's  done  us  good,  you  know. 
We  wanted  a  bit  of  stuffing  knocked  into  us." 

O'Rane  had  sat  through  the  dinner  in  one  of  his  effective 
silences.  As  the  others  pushed  back  their  chairs  and  sauntered 
into  the  hall,  he  caught  my  arm  and  drew  me  through  an 
open  French  window  into  the  garden. 

"There,  there,  there  you  have  it,"  he  stammered  excitedly, 
"first  hand!  From  a  man  who's  been  out  there!  'We  were 
getting  a  bit  slack  and  wanted  stiffening.'  My  God !" 

"It  was  true  as  far  as  it  went,"  I  pointed  out. 

"And  is  that  the  only  lesson  he's  learnt?  Man,  before 
this  war  we  could  put  Europe  in  our  vest  pocket.  Now 
they've  taken  our  measure.  You  don't  read  the  foreign 
papers." 

Barely  three  years  had  elapsed,  but  I  confess  I  had  for- 
gotten that  when  Raney,  in  the  period  of  fagdom,  suffered 
voluntary  martyrdom  once  in  ten  days,  it  was  in  order  to 
spend  his  unmolested  afternoons  studying  the  continental 
Press. 

"D'you  still  do  that?"  I  asked. 

"In  the  same  old  way.  All  through  the  war,  everything 
I  could  get  hold  of  in  the  Public  Library.  It's  instructive 
reading,  George.  They — simply — hate — us — abroad ;  and  they 
aren't  as  much  scared  of  us  as  they  used  to  be.  We've  made 
an  everlasting  show  of  our  weakness,  and  we  had  a  close  call 
of  being  attacked  while  our  hands  were  full." 

"Who  wants  to  attack  us?"  I  asked. 

"Anyone  with  anything  to  gain.  France,  as  long  as  we 
hold  Egypt ;  Russia,,  as  long  as  we  hold  India ;  Germany,  as 
long  as  we  threaten  the  trade  of  the  world  with  our  fleet. 
'Well,  it's  all  over  now.'  When  I  hear  people  talking  like 


96  SONIA 

that  .  .  .  You  dam'  British  don't  deserve  to  survive." 

He  ground  the  glowing  end  of  his  cigar  into  the  loose 
gravel  with  a  savage  twist  of  his  heel. 

"Come  off  the  stump,  Raney,"  I  said.  "Anyone  can  make 
a  damn-you-all-round  speech.  What  d'you  want  done?" 

"Ten  years'  organization  of  our  British  Empire,"  he 
answered.  "If  we  mustered  our  full  resources,  we  could 
snap  our  fingers  at  any  other  power." 

My  political  convictions  exist  to  be  discarded,  and  before 
the  war  had  been  six  months  in  progress  I  had  ceased  to  call 
myself  a  pro-Boer;  a  year  or  two  later  I  was  an  impenitent 
Liberal  Leaguer.  In  my  progress  from  one  pole  to  the  other 
I  lived  in  philosophic  doubt  tempered  by  profound  distrust 
of  the  word  'Imperalism'  and  the  vision  of  Rand  Jews 
which  it  conjured  up. 

"Hang  it,  we've  only  just  finished  one  war,"  I  said.  "I 
don't  want  another." 

"You  can  have  an  organized  empire  and  a  competent  army 
without  going  to  war." 

"I  doubt  it,"  I  said.  "The  temptation's  too  great.  The 
first  day  I  was  given  an  air-gun — this  is  many  years  ago, 
Raney — I  winged  a  harmless,  necessary  milch  cow.  The 
alpha  and  omega  of  British  policy  should  be  to  have  a  navy 
so  efficient  that  no  one  can  attack  us  and  an  army  so  in- 
efficient that  we  daren't  attack  anyone  else.  If  you  aim  at 
all-round  efficiency,  you'll  probably  have  the  rest  of  Europe 
on  your  back  and  you'll  certainly  go  bankrupt." 

He  was  preparing  an  explosive  retort  when  one  of  the 
drawing-room  windows  opened,  and  Sonia  came  toward  us. 

"Bedtime  ?';  I  asked,  as  she  held  out  her  hand. 

"Rot,  isn't  it?"  she  answered,  wrinkling  her  nose.  "I 
ehall  be  sixteen  next  birthday,  too." 

"When  /  was  your  age  ..."  O'Rane  began  improvingly. 

"I  used  to  thrash  you  two  or  three  times  a  month,"  I 
put  in. 

Sonia  looked  at  him  wonderingly. 

"Is  that  true,  David?"  she  demanded. 

He  nodded  his  head. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      97 

"You  beast,  George !"  Sonia  burst  out  with  a  cencentrated 
venom  that  abashed  me. 

O'Rane  glanced  in  momentary  surprise  at  the  rigid  in- 
dignant little  figure  with  the  clenched  fists  and  bitten  lip. 
Then  he  caught  her  up  in  his  arms. 

"Bambina,  you're  the  only  person  in  the  whole  world 
who  loves  me.  George  couldn't  help  himself,  though;  I 
was  out  for  trouble.  And  I  could  have  knocked  him  down 
and  broken  every  bone  in  his  body  if  I'd  wanted  to — just  as 
I  could  now.  Only  he  was  right  and  I  was  wrong.  Kiss  me 
good-night,  sweetheart." 

He  lowered  her  gently  till  her  feet  touched  the  ground, 
but  sudden  shyness  had  come  over  her,  and  she  would  only 
hold  out  a  hand. 

"Clearly  I'm  in  the  way,"  I  said,  as  I  moved  towards  the 
house. 

"I'm  coming  too,"  Sonia  called  out.  "No,  David,  you're 
grown  up  now." 

He  snorted  indignantly. 

"That's  a  rotten  reason.  Are  you  never  going  to  kiss 
me  again?  This  year?"  She  shook  her  head.  "Next  year? 
Some  time?" 

"Some  time.     Perhaps." 

She  ran  into  the  house,  and  O'Rane  and  I  took  one  more 
turn  along  the  terrace  before  following  her. 

"Grown  up!"  he  exclaimed,  after  a  moment's  silence. 

"That's  still  rankling?"  I  asked. 

"No,  I  was  just  thinking.  I  fancy  I  was  pretty  well 
grown  up  before  we  ever  met,  George." 

"As  much  as  you  ever  will  be,"  I  suggested. 

"As  much  as  I  ever  want  to  be,  old  son.  It's  been  like 
an  extraordinary  dream,  you  know,  these  last  four  years. 
Everything  topsy-turvy.  ...  I  was  years  and  years  older 
than  you  and  Jim  when  you  used  to  thrash  me.  ...  If  you 
can  imagine  yourself  coming  to  a  place  like  Melton  after 
knocking  about  all  round  the  world,  living  from  hand  to 
mouth.  .  .  .  The  holidays  were  the  time  I  really  worked. 
Do  you  remember  when  you  and  Jim  found  me  at  the  Empire 


98  SONIA 

Hotel?  You've  never  mentioned  it  from  that  day  to  this. 
7'm  not  ashamed  of  it  and,  though  you  two  had  your  eyes 
bulging  out  of  your  head,  I  don't  suppose  with  all  your  con- 
ventionality you  think  the  worse  of  me  for  it.  Anyway  I 
don't  care  a  damn  if  you  do."  He  paused  and  lit  a  cigarette. 
"I'm  going  to  have  a  holiday  now,  George.  Idle  about  till 
October.  And  then  in  the  holidays — vacations,  you  call  'em, 
don't  you? — I  shall  get  hold  of  soft,  genteel  jobs — private 
tutor  to  aristocratic  imbeciles — — •" 

"And  then?" 

He  yawned  luxuriantly. 

"And  then  I  shall  settle  down  to  earn  a  great  deal  of 
money.  I'm  never  going  through  the  old  mill  again,  George. 
Anl  when  I've  earned  it  I  shall  buy  a  villa  at  Naples  and  rot 
there.  Are  you  going  into  the  drawing-room?  I  don't  think 
I  shall,  it's  such  a  grand  night  out  here.  I  want  to  think 
over  this  amazing  country  of  yours,  where  a  man  can  drop 
from  the  skies — I  was  junior  steward  on  a  'Three  Funnel' 
liner  just  before — drop  down,  find  his  feet,  find  people  to 
employ  him  and  weigh  him  out  scholarships.  .  .  .  George,  so 
far  as  I  can  make  out,  after  four  years  here,  there's  not  a 
damn  thing  you  don't  fling  open  to  the  veriest  dago  and  pay 
him  handsome  to  take  the  job.  'Ejectum  litore,  egentem 
excepi  .  .  .'  No,  that's  a  bad  omen."  He  spun  round 
and  smote  me  on  the  shoulder.  "I  owe  a  lot  to  this  rottec 
country  and  I  shall  owe  a  lot  more  before  I'm  through  with 
it.  Now  I'm  going  to  take  charge  of  the  piano  and  sing  songs 
to  you.  ..." 

It  was  O'Rane  who  went  into  the  drawing-room,  and  I 
who  stayed  outside  in  enjoyment  of  the  night.  Roger  Dainton 
took  the  opportunity  of  a  quiet  stroll  and  a  few  moments' 
conversation.  While  in  London  he  had  been  sounded  in  the 
matter  of  a  baronetcy.  I  believed  him  when  he  protested 
that  his  troop  of  yeomanry  had  been  raised  without  any 
thought  of  what  honours  or  decorations  he  might  draw  from 
the  lucky  tub  after  the  war.  I  almost  believed  him  when 
he  said  he  thought  of  accepting  the  offer  because  it  would 
gratify  his  wife.  And  I  felt  a  certain  wonder  and  pity  that 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN      99 

in  his  curiously  unfriended  state,  half-way  between  two  social 
spheres,  he  should  come  for  advice  to  a  man  less  than  half 
his  own  age. 


"LODGINGS  FOR  THE  OCTOBER  TERM" 

Square  cards  inscribed  with  that  device  had  offered  me 
welcome  for  three  years,  and  in  the  last  term  of  my  third 
year  Loring  and  I  settled  seriously  to  the  task  of  finding 
a  new  home  against  the  day  when  we  should  be  flung, 
time-expired,  from  our  loved  quarters  in  Tom.  'Seriously' 
in  spirit  if  not  in  method,  for  we  chartered  a  coach-and- 
four,  invited  a  dozen  men  to  breakfast  and  set  out  from 
Canterbury  Gate  with  luncheon-baskets  sufficient  to  feed  a 
company.  Proceeding  impressively  up  King  Edward  Street 
we  doubled  back  into  St.  Ebbs  in  search  of  what  Loring 
called  "working-class  tenements  for  virtuous  Radicals."  Fail- 
ing to  find  anything  that  suited  us,  we  returned  by  Brewer 
Street  and  inspected  Micklem  Hall,  but  there  was  a  garden 
attached,  and  we  should  have  been  constrained  to  walk  a 
beagle-puppy.  Leaving  the  last  question  open,  I  dispossessed 
Loring  of  the  box-seat  and  drove  for  the  next  half -hour,  be- 
cause he  had  laid  me  five  to  three  that  there  was  no  such 
college  as  Wadham,  and  seven  to  two  that  if  there  were  I 
could  not  find  it. 

I  remember  we  lunched  a  mile  or  two  north  of  Woodstock 
because  Crabtree  of  Magdalen,  who  had  as  usual  invited 
himself  and  assumed  direction  of  our  movements,  insisted  that 
our  last  year  must  be  undisturbed.  In  the  late  evening  we 
returned  triumphantly  to  Oxford  and  collided  with  a  tram  at 
the  bottom  of  the  Turl.  A  languid  voice  from  the  first-floor 
window  of  93o  High  Street  inquired  if  we  needed  anything. 

"Lodgings  for  the  October  and  two  succeeding  terms," 
Loring  called  back. 

"These  aren't  bad  digs,"  answered  the  voice,  and  Crabtree 
was  left  to  sort  out  the  Corporation  tram  while  Loring  and  I 


ioo  SONIA 

inspected  the  house  opposite. 

"They've  got  the  makings  of  very  decent  quarters,"  he 
admitted  handsomely.  "Decoration  vile,"  he  added  in  an 
aside,  "but  then,  what  d'you  expect  of  a  B.N.C.  man?  A 
furtive  creature  with  obliquity  of  vision  ushered  us  in.  We 
must  get  rid  of  him,  George.  Find  out  whether  he  is  the 
landlord  or  a  B.N.C.  don  or  merely  our  young  friend's  male 
parent." 

I  ascertained  that  the  man  of  repellent  aspect  was  the 
landlord. 

"I  suppose  we  must  take  your  ghastly  digs,"  said  Loring 
between  a  yawn  and  a  sigh. 

The  following  October  we  moved  in  and  gave  a  house- 
warming — with  the  town  band  engaged  to  play  waltzes  out- 
side while  we  dined.  It  was  a  bachelor  dinner,  but  Grayes 
of  Trinity  and  Henderson  and  Billings  of  the  House  chartered 
rooms  at  the  "Dumb  Bell,"  and  came  over  in  Empire  gowns, 
chestnut  wigs,  cloaks  and  cigarettes.  We  danced  until  the 
band  went  home  to  bed  and  then  led  our  guests  round  to 
inspect  and  praise  our  decorations  and  observe  the  absence  of 
Pringle,  the  landlord,  who  had  been  exiled  to  a  cottage  on 
Boar's  Hill. 

"Best  bedroom,  second-best  bedroom,"  Loring  explained. 
"Spare  bedrooms  also  ran.  Bathroom.  All  that  messuage. 
Lounge.  Kitchen.  Usual  offices.  Hot  and  cold.  Electric 
lights  and  bells.  Gent's  eligible  town  residence." 

It  was  eligible  in  every  way,  with  window-seats  over- 
looking the  High  from  which  we  could  watch  passers-by 
surreptitiously  trying  to  pick  up  the  half-crown  that  Loring 
from  time  to  time  glued  to  the  pavement.  The  house  had  been 
repainted  inside  and  out,  there  were  new  carpets  and  furniture, 
a  grand  piano  in  one  room  and  two  Siamese  kittens  in  every 
other.  Old  Lady  Loring  used  to  complain  of  dust  when  she 
came  to  visit  us,  but  her  son  assured  her  that  this  was  but 
a  concession  to  my  democratic  spirit.  We  were  certainly 
comfortable.  As  Loring  observed  the  first  night,  "Now  we've 
every  excuse  for  neglecting  our  work." 

He  was  reading  Greats;  I,  History.    We  both  expected 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    101 

seconds,  hoped  for  firsts  and  told  our  friends  thirds.  WJiat 
our  tutors  thought,  I  have  no  idea.  Loring  never  consulted 
his  unduly. 

"I  pay  the  College  eight  pounds  a  term  tuition  fees,"  he 
reasoned.  "I'll  make  it  twice  that  if  they'll  leave  me  alone. 
I  want  to  think.  Your  society  alone,  George,  is  an  Undenomi- 
national Education." 

So  he  breakfasted  at  nine,  cut  lectures  till  one,  lunched  at 
the  Club  and  hacked  twenty  miles  in  the  afternoon.  From 
tea  till  dinner  he  would  wander  round  Oxford  buying  prints 
and  large-paper  editions ;  after  dinner  he  would  take  a  kitten 
on  his  knee  and  read  German  metaphysics  aloud  to  it  with  a 
wealth  of  feeling  in  his  voice.  At  eleven  we  would  pay  one  or 
two  calls  or  sit  talking  till  a  late  hour. 

It  was  Andrew  Lang,  I  believe,  who  said  that  the  reason 
why  there  were  no  good  books  on  Oxford  life  was  because  they 
were  all  written  by  women  who  had  spent  one  day  in — 
Cambridge.  I  sometimes  fancy  that  Oxford  reformers  are 
really  Oxford  novelists  off  duty.  We  went  through  the  transi- 
tion from  boyhood  to  man's  estate  in  some  of  this  world's 
loveliest  surroundings.  Does  it  matter  what  we  read  or  when , 
we  read  it?  A  time  had  to  come  when  each  of  us  had  the 
choice  of  working  uncompelled  or  not  working  at  all ;  we  could 
not  be  given  lines  and  detention  all  our  life,  and  at  Oxford  I 
worked  hard.  So  did  Loring,  for  all  his  outward  pose  of 
idleness.  We  read  seven  hours  a  day  for  two-thirds  of  the 
vacation  and  were  not  wholly  unoccupied  even  during  term. 

Looking  back  on  it  all  I  can  find  no  period  of  mental 
development  to  compare  with  my  last  year  at  Oxford.  It  was 
no  small  thing  to  read  a  thousand  years  of  history,  however 
superficially.  I  began  to  touch  general  principles,  to  discard 
cherished  preconceptions,,  and  little  by  little  to  hammer  out 
a  philosophy  of  my  own.  In  political  science  and  economy 
Loring's  school  overlapped  mine  to  some  extent,  and  in  the 
rambling  'School  shop'  we  talked  lay  the  germ  of  the 
Thursday  Club.  Every  week  of  term  and  for  a  year  or  two 
after  I  came  down,  some  ten  of  us  would  meet  and  dine 
together.  There  was  a  "book  of  the  week" — too  long  or 


102  SONIA 

dull  for  all  to  read — which  one  would  undertake  to  digest  and 
expound.  "Saint  Simon's  Memoirs,"  the  "Contrat  Social," 
the  "Paston  Letters"  were  among  the  works  we  had  served 
up  to  us  minced  and  rechauffe. 

Later  on,  when  Loring  had  dropped  out,  we  became  more 
purely  political.  Carmichael  brought  us  in  touch  with  so- 
cialist writers,  and  a  week-end  visit  from  Baxter  Whitting- 
ham  of  Lincoln  and  Shadwell  was  responsible  for  my  brief 
taste  of  working-class  conditions  some  years  later.  I  cannot 
hope  that  everyone  nowadays  looks  at  "Thursday  Essays," 
which  we  published  in  1904  as  a  statement  of  Young  Oxford 
Liberalism,  but,  though  it  had  little  effect  on  the  outside  world, 
it  consolidated  its  authors.  Seddon  of  Corpus,  who  wrote  on 
"Unemployment,"  is  now  in  the  Insurance  Commission ;  Terry 
of  Lincoln,  the  author  of  "Small  Holdings,"  was  private 
secretary  to  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture ;  Ainger, 
Mansfield,  Gregory  and  I,  who  spread  ourselves  on  "Public 
Economy,"  "Federation  and  the  National  Ideal,"  "The  Ten- 
drils of '  Socialism,"  and  "The  Irish  Question  Once  More," 
all  found  our  way  into  the  House  at  the  time  of  the  1906 
Election. 

Loring,  too,  matured  on  lines  of  his  own.  It  would  per- 
haps be  truer  to  say  that  he  developed  that  dual  personality 
of  which  the  germs  had  been  existent  at  Melton.  He  was 
a  cynic  and  idealist, — no  uncommon  union, — a  pessimist  and 
a  practical  reformer,  honestly  believing  that  the  world  was 
gradually  deteriorating,  that  to  cleanse  the  corruption  was 
beyond  man's  powers,  and  yet  that  it  was  worth  his  own 
while  to  run  the  lost  race  to  a  finish. 

I  always  fancy  I  can  trace  three  phases  through  which  he 
passed,  three  sources  of  inspiration.  At  school  his  taste 
for  the  romantic  and  picturesque  found  satisfaction  in  the 
Church  of  which  he  was  a  member:  Eternal  Rome  captured 
his  imagination,  and,  while  I  aspired  to  a  vague  universal 
brotherhood,  he  hoped  and  believed  that  Temporal  Power 
would  some  day  be  once  more  oecumenical  and  that  the  warring 
world  would  in  time  find  peace  in  a  new  age  of  faith.  Ox- 
ford and  the  society  of  his  fellow  Catholics  broke  into  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    103 

dream.  Doctrinally  he  was  unsettled  by  the  philosophy  he 
read  for  'Greats,'  and  the  fabric  and  organization  of  his 
Church  brought  disillusionment  when  he  saw  them  at  close 
quarters.  Old  Lord  Loring  had  made  the  house  in  Curzon 
Street  a  centre  for  English  Catholicism.  I  remember  balls 
and  bazaars,  receptions  and  committee-meetings  without  end, 
Catholic  marquesses  were  rare,  they  had  to  work  hard ;  they 
were  also  valuable  as  giving  social  respectability  to  a  perse- 
cuted Church.  An  inconspicuous,  undistinguished  peer  as- 
sumed rather  an  exalted  position  in  a  small  religious  com- 
munion where  everyone  knew  everyone  else.  I  imagine  more 
people  spoke  of  'dear  Lord  Loring"  than  would  have  been 
the  case  had  his  religion  been,  say,  that  of  the  Established 
Church.  His  son  felt  and  expressed  extreme  repugnance  for 
the  position  he  was  expected  to  fill.  The  Catholic  Church  in 
partibus  infidelium  was  not  a  trading  company,  and  he  de- 
clined to  have  his  name  published  on  the  prospectus  to  inspire 
confidence  among  doubting  subscribers. 

On  ceasing  to  be  a  Catholic  in  anything  but  name,  he  had 
a  second  bout  of  mediae valism,  and  dreamed,  as  Disraeli 
dreamed  in  the  'Young  England'  days,  of  a  re-vitalized, 
ascendant  aristocracy.  The  reality  of  the  dream  passed 
quickly;  it  is  questionable  how  much  faith  Disraeli  himself 
put  into  his  vision,  though  anything  was  possible  while  the 
political  revolution  of  the  first  Reform  Bill  was  still  seething. 
It  is  doubtful  if  Loring  ever  considered  his  idealized  aris- 
tocracy of  philosopher-kings  otherwise  than  with  a  senti- 
mental, unhistorical  regret.  And  when  he  abandoned  hope  of 
seeing  mankind  regenerated  either  by  the  spiritual  influence  of 
his  Church  or  the  temporal  influence  of  his  order,  I  think  he 
abandoned  hope  of  seeing  mankind  regenerated  at  all.  Life 
thereafter  became  a  private,  personal  matter;  he  preserved  a 
fastidious  sense  of  what  was  incumbent  on  him  to  do  and  a 
pride  in  not  being  false  to  his  own  standards.  What  happened 
to  the  world  outside  his  gates  was  an  irrelevance  with  which, 
in  his  growing  detachment  and  surface  cynicism,  he  declined 
to  interest  himself. 

It  was  at  Oxford  that  he  passed  from  the  first  to  the 


io4  SONIA 

second  of  his  three  phases.  We  were  none  of  us  more  than  a 
few  months  distant  from  the  untravelled  world  of  men's 
work — sub-consciously  we  were  all  striving  after  a  self-ex- 
pression that  should  leave  its  mark  on  that  work.  Heaven 
be  thanked !  not  one  of  us  dreamed  how  ineffective  our 
personalities  were  to  prove,  how  unromantic  our  humdrum 
work,  how  meagre  our  hard-bought  results !  In  the  twelve 
years  that  passed  between  these  last  terms  and  the  outbreak  of 
a  war  that  at  least  brought  spaciousness  back  to  human  life, 
I  can  think  of  only  one  of  my  friends  who  failed  to  become 
in  greater  or  less  degree  commonplace.  That  was  O'Rane,  and 
his  store  of  the  romantic  could  never  quite  be  exhausted.  He 
was  too  fearless  of  soul.  A  commonplace  mind  and  life 
are  the  lot  of  the  conventional,  and  conventionality  is  the 
atmosphere  in  which  alone  the  timid  can  exist.  To  defy  a 
convention  may  not  gain  a  man  the  whole  world,  but  it  not 
infrequently  saves  his  soul. 

O'Rane  came  up  in  my  last  year  as  one  of  a  mixed  draft 
from  Melton.  Mayhew  and  Sam  Dainton  we  knew,  but  the 
others  were  little  more  than  names  to  us.  Dutifully  Loring 
and  I  gave  a  couple  of  Sunday  breakfasts  and  sighed  when 
our  guest  left  us  for  a  walk  round  the  Parks  before  luncheon. 
The  meals  were  as  difficult  as  they  were  long,  for  the  freshmen 
were  shy,  and  we  had  outgrown  our  taste  for  early  morning 
banquets.  When  conversation  was  fanned  into  life,  we  found 
it  sadly  juvenile.  Were  we  not  fourth-year  men,  a  thought 
jaded,  and  with  difficulty  interested  in  anecdotes  of  a  scout's 
eccentricities  or  descriptions  of  unsuccessful  flight  from  proc- 
tors? When  the  last  guest  pocketed  his  half-guinea  straight- 
grained  pipe  (which  we  had  been  forced  to  admire)  and 
clattered  down  the  stairs  to  walk  a  dejected  terrier  of  mixed 
ancestry  through  Oxford,  Loring  shook  his  head  despair- 
ingly. 

"We  were  not  like  that,  George,"  he  asserted. 

"We  were  rather  a  good  year,  of  course,"  I  agreed. 

He  emptied  a  succession  of  ash  trays,  thoughtfully  re- 
placed the  cushions  on  the  sofas  and  straightened  the  anti- 
macassars. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    105 

"Twelve  of  them,  weren't  there?"  he  asked.  "And  they'll 
all  invite  us  back,  every  jack  man  of  them." 

"And  we  shall  have  to  go,  too,"  I  also  sighed,  "and  make 
sport  for  them,  after  waiting  half  an  hour  in  a  room  full 
of  unknown  while  our  host  hurriedly  splashes  himself  next 
door  and  apologizes  for  having  forgotten  all  about  the  in- 
vitation. 

"We  never  did  that!" 

"Once," 'I  said. 

"We  called  on  O'Rane  the  first  night  of  term,  and  com- 
pelled him  to  dine  with  us  the  second.  I  had  not  forgotten 
a  slight  disappointment  of  my  own  early  days.  One  of  my 
best  friends  at  Melton  had  been  Jerry  Pinsent :  we  shared  the 
omnibus-study  in  Matheson's  and  stayed  with  each  other  in 
the  holidays.  I  fully  expected  that,  as  a  second-year  man,  he 
would  take  me  by  the  hand  and  guide  my  feet  among  the 
pitfalls  of  etiquette — largely  the  imagination  of  a  self-con- 
scious freshman — with  which  I  understood  Oxford  to  be  set. 
Pinsent  was  affable,  even  kindly.  He  offered  me  a  seat  in  his 
mess  and  introduced  me  to  his  friends.  Alas !  it  was  not 
enough.  I  found  it  indecent  that  he  should  have  surrounded 
himself  so  completely  and  so  speedily.  I  was  immoderately 
jealous  of  his  friends'  free-and-easy  Christian-name  habit,  and 
as  two  of  them  were  Blues  (Pinsent  himself  was  a  fine  oar 
until  he  broke  his  wrist  in  a  bicycling  accident)  I  decided  very 
unworthily  that  he  was  a  snob  and  a  faithless  friend.  With 
equal  self -consciousness  I  determined  that  O'Rane  should 
never  charge  me  with  aloofness  or  want  of  cordiality. 

We  invited  no  one  to  meet  him.  There  would  be  time 
for  that  later,  and  in  any  case  he  was  likely  to  be  known  all 
over  Oxford  before  the  term  was  out. 

"He  shall  stand  on  his  hind-legs  and  do  his  tricks  for 
us  alone,"  said  Loring,  who  pretended  to  laugh  at  O'Rane  in 
order  to  conceal  an  admiration  not  far  removed  from  affection. 
"The  wild  beast  that  has  been  fed  into  domesticity." 

There  was  little  enough  of  the  wild  beast  about  O'Rane 
in  the  year  of  grace  1902.  The  starved  look  had  gone  out  of 
his  face,  and  his  eyes  were  no  longer  those  of  a  hunted  animal 


io6  SONIA 

at  bay.  We  leant  out  of  the  window  to  squirt  soda-water 
on  to  him  as  he  came  down  the  High  with  light,  swinging 
step  and  an  engaging  devil-may-care  swagger.  He  walked 
bareheaded,  and  the  fine,  black  hair — ornately  parted  and 
brushed  for  the  occasion — blew  into  disorder  as  the  autumn 
wind  swept  down  the  street  with  a  scent  of  fallen  leaves  and  a 
hint  of  the  dying  year. 

"You  know,  Raney,  you'd  have  made  an  extraordinarily 
beautiful  girl,"  said  Loring  reflectively  as  they  met. 

"If  the  Almighty'd  known  the  Marquess  Loring  had  any 
feeling  in  the  matter "  O'Rane  began. 

"Poets  would  have  immortalized  your  eyes,"  Loring  pur- 
sued with  a  yawn,  "Painters  would  have  died  in  despair 

of  representing  their  shadowy,  unfathomable  depths "  He 

raised  his  hand  and  waved  it  rhythmically.  '  'Their  shadowy, 
unfathomable  depths,'  you  can't  keep  from  blank  verse! 
Have  a  cigarette,  little  stranger.  Being  an  alleged  man, 
you're  a  bit  undersized  and  effeminate." 

O'Rane  caught  Loring  by  one  wrist  and  with  a  single 
movement  brought  him  to  his  knees. 

"Effeminate?"  he  demanded. 

Loring  attempted  to  reconcile  dignity  with  a  kneeling 
position. 

"Oh,  you've  got  a  certain  vulgar  strength,"  he  admitted, 
"like  most  modern  girls.  But  you've  got  the  hands  and  feet 
of  a  professional  beauty.  Of  course  you  may  not  have  stopped 
growing  yet." 

"I'm  five  feet  nine!    I  admit  I've  not  much  fat  on  me!" 

Honour  was  satisfied,  and  I  separated  the  combatants. 
For  his  height  Loring  was  very  well  proportioned,  but  he 
hated  an  imputation  of  fatness  almost  as  much  as  O'Rane 
hated  being  teased  about  his  slightness  of  body  or  smallness 
of  bone.  He  certainly  made  up  into  a  very  beautiful  woman 
when  the  O.U.D.S.  played  "Henry  V"  and  he  took  the  part 
of  Katherine.  The  intention  had  been  to  follow  the  practice 
of  years  and  invite  a  professional  actress  from  London; 
O'Rane's  performance,  however,  was  too  good  to  be  set  aside. 
I  have  a  photograph  of  the  company  with  Raney  seated  in  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    107 

middle.  With  his  small,  sensitive  mouth  and  white  teeth, 
his  clean-cut  nose  and  long-lashed,  large  black  eyes,  he  makes 
a  very  attractive  girl. 

"This  is  a  wonderful  place,"  he  said,  as  we  sat  down  to 
dinner.  "I've  been  sight-seeing  to-day." 

"Anything  worth  seeing?"  asked  Loring,  whose  substan- 
tially accurate  boast  it  was  that  he  had  never  been  within 
the  walls  of  a  strange  college. 

We  found  that  O'Rane  had  been  prompt  and  thorough, 
ranging  from  the  "Light  of  the  World"  in  Keble  Chapel  to 
the  scene  of  Amy  Robsart's  death,  and  from  the  gardens  of 
Worcester  to  Addison's  Walk.  He  talked  of  Grinling  Gib- 
bons' carving  with  a  facility  I  envied  when  it  was  my  fate  to 
conduct  my  mother  and  sister  round  Oxford. 

"Wonderful  place,"  he  repeated.  "Choked  up  with  the 
debris  of  mediaevalism.  Atmosphere  rather  worse  than  a 
tropical  swamp.  Last  refuge  of  dead  enthusiasms  and  hotbed 
of  sprouting  affectations." 

He  jerked  out  the  criticism  and  turned  his  attention  to 
the  soup. 

"You're  very  disturbing,  Raney,"  I  said.  "For  four  years 
you  knocked  Melton  inside  out;  can't  you  leave  Oxford 
alone?  I'm  rather  fond  of  it." 

"So  am  I — already.  I'm  fond  of  any  place  that  picks  a 
man  up  and  sets  him  on  his  legs.  I'm  fond  of  England  as  you 
two  can  never  be." 

"You're  extraordinarily  old-fashioned,   Raney." 

"If  to  be  grateful  is  to  be  old-fashioned."  He  leant 
back  and  gazed  at  the  ceiling.  "I  think  it's  a  workable 
philosophy.  There  are  people  who  can  do  things  I  can't  do, 
and  there  are  people  who  can't  do  the  things  I  can.  It's  a 
long  scale — strong,  less  strong,  weak,  more  weak.  If  every 
man  helped  the  man  below  him.  .  .  .  You  fellows  would 
say  I'm  superstitious.  I  dare  say.  If  you're  the  one  man  to 
come  out  of  an  earthquake  alive,  you  start  believing  in  a 
special  providence.  .  .  .  I've  been  helped  a  bit — and  I've 
once  of  twice  helped  another  man.  Whenever  I  could,  in 
fact.  And  from  the  depths  of  my  soul  I  believe  if  I  said  'no' 


io8  SONIA 

when  I  was  asked  .  .  ."He  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  left 
the  sentence  unfinished. 

"Well,  go  on!"  It  was  Loring  who  spoke,  not  without 
interest.  "What  would  happen  ?" 

"I  should  be  damned  out  of  hand.  I  don't  mean  a  bolt 
from  heaven,  but  I  ...  I  should  never  be  able  to  do  anything 
again.  I  should  be  hamstrung." 

"Black  superstition,"  was  Loring's^  comment. 

"Not  a  bit  of  it !  There's  a  fear  o'f  subjective  damnation 
far  more  vigorous  than  the  outer  darkness  and  worm-that- 
dies-not  nonsense." 

"You're  on  too  high  a  plane  for  dinner,"  said  Loring. 
"You  should  cultivate  the  pleonectic  side  of  life.  I've  had 
two  roes  on  toast,  and  I'm  going  to  have  a  third." 

VI 

Never  have  I  known  time  pass  so  quickly  as  during  that 
last  year.  Early  in  the  Michaelmas  term  both  Loring  and  I 
developed  acute  'Schools-panic';  we  barred  ourselves  inside 
*93DJ  and  read  ten  hours  a  day,  planning  retreats  in  Corn- 
wall for  the  vac.,  when  we  were  to  rise  at  dawn,  bathe  in  the 
sea  and  work  in  four  shifts  of  four  hours  each.  The  cottage 
was  almost  taken  when  a  revulsion  of  feeling  led  us  to  adopt 
an  attitude  of  melancholy  fatalism.  We  said — what  was  true 
enough — that  life  under  such  conditions  was  not  worth  liv- 
ing; we  added — what  was  less  true — that  we  did  not  care 
whether  we  got  firsts  or  fourths. 

Gradually  the  door  of  '93o'  was  unbarred.  We  dined  in 
Hall  once  or  twice  a  week  and  attended  clubs  to  eat  dessert 
for  which — as  we  were  out  of  College — other  people  paid.  The 
men  of  our  year  had  by  this  time  been  infected  with  our 
own  morbid  state  of  conscience,  but  there  were  still  happy 
second-year  men  without  a  care  in  the  world,  and  freshmen 
who — so  far  as  I  could  see — were  living  solely  for  pleasure. 

In  Oxford  during  springtime,  with  the  chestnuts,  lilac 
and  laburnum  blazing  into  colour,  it  is  nothing  short  of  sac- 
rilege to  read  Select  Charters  and  Documents  of  Consti- 
tutional History.  As  the  evenings  lengthened  we  used  to  find 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    109 

alfresco  coffee-parties  being  held  in  a  corner  of  Peck.  I 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Summertown,  an  irrepressible 
freckled,  red-haired  little  Etonian,  the  permanent  thorn  in  the 
side  of  his  father,  Lord  Marlyn,  who  was  at  this  time  Coun- 
cillor of  Embassy  in  Paris.  It  was  his  practice  to  drag  a  table, 
chairs  and  piano  into  the  Quad  and  dispense  coffee  and  iced 
champagne  cup  to  all  who  passed.  O'Rane  would  be  found 
at  the  piano, — or  on  top  of  it  with  a  guitar  across  his  knees, — 
and  the  rest  of  us  would  lie  back  in  long  wicker  chairs,  gazing 
dreamily  up  at  the  scarlet  and  white  flowers  in  the  window- 
boxes,  the  flaky,  grey-black  walls,  and  far  above  them  the 
early  stars  shining  down  from  the  darkening  sky. 

I  had  predicted  that  Raney's  personality  would  impress 
itself  upon  Oxford,  though  I  never  underestimated  the  diffi- 
culty in  a  place  so  given  over  to  particularism  and  fierce  local 
jealousies.  At  this  time  the  only  men  who  had  a  reputation 
outside  their  own  colleges  were  perhaps  six  in  number :  Blair 
of  Trinity,  who  walked  round  Oxford  of  an  afternoon  with  a 
hawk  on  his  wrist ;  "Pongo"  Jerrold,  who  kept  pedigree  blood- 
hounds; Granville,  the  President  of  the  O.U.D.S.;  Johnny 
Carstairs,  who  removed  the  minute  hand  from  the  post  office 
clock  in  St.  Aldate's  every  night  of  the  Michaelmas  term ;  and 
perhaps  two  more,  of  whom  O'Rane  was  one.  As  so  often,  the 
world  knew  him  for  his  accidents  and  overlooked  his  essence. 
He  was  quoted  as  a  Union  speaker  of  wild  gesticulation  and 
frenzied  Celtic  eloquence;  as  a  pamphleteer  and  lampoonist 
who  could  seemingly  write  impromptu  verse  on  any  subject,  in 
all  metres  and  most  languages ;  as  the  author  of  ninety-five 
per  cent  of  "The  Critic,"  a  short-lived  weekly  started  by 
Mayhew,  who,  I  am  convinced,  would  establish  morning, 
evening,  monthly  and  quarterly  periodicals  the  day  after 
being  washed  up  on  the  beach  of  a  desert  island. 

Inside  the  College  he  was  chiefly  famed  for  turbulence, 
invective  and  irreverence.  "Lord,  he  hath  a_devil,"  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  the  comment  of  one  Censor:  he  certainly 
had  more  than  one  man's  vitality.  With  his  faculty  of  omni- 
presence, he  was  known  to  all,  though  he  could  show  little 
hospitality  and  was  averse  from  appearing  too  often  at  the 


i  io  SONIA 

table  of  others.  Indeed  we  could  only  get  him  round  to  93D 
High  Street  on  presentation  of  an  ultimatum,  and  it  was  use- 
less to  trouble  over  the  arrangement  of  a  dinner,  as  he  was 
then — as  always — sublimely  indifferent  to  all  he  ate  and  drank. 
The  only  hunger  he  seemed  to  know  was  the  hunger  for  self- 
expression,  and  he  gratified  it  with  tongue  and  pen  in  his  work, 
his  friendships  and  his  animosities.  These  last  were  short- 
lived, but  as  violent  as  if  he  were  still  the  unreclaimed  'venge- 
ful Celt'  of  schooldays,  and,  as  at  Melton,  he  was  usually  to  be 
found  carrying  on  a  shower-and-sunshine  quarrel  with  one  or 
other  member  of  Senior  Common  Room. 

"Sacre  nom  de  chien!"  he  roared  to  heaven  as  we  crossed 
Tom  Quad  one  night  after  dining  at  the  High  Table.  "They 
are  children  and  snobs  and  spiteful  old  women!  Little  Tem- 
pleton,  your  loathly  tutor,  wears  a  dog  collar  and  expounds 
the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  first  of  the  Sansculottes,  who  re- 
garded not  the  face  of  a  man."  He  drew  a  fresh  breath  and 
gripped  me  by  the  lapels  of  my  coat.  "The  beast  drowned  me 
in  Upper  Ten  shop  the  livelong  night.  'E'm  effreed  E'm  a 
little  leete,  Mister  O'Reene.  Lard  Jarn  Carstairs'  affection 
for  the  perst  office  clerck  makes  it  herd  to  be  punctual.'  Then 
anecdotes  of  Rosebery  as  an  undergraduate  and  the  everlasting 
Blenheim  Ball!  A  bas  les  snobs!"  He  seized  a  stone  and 
flung  it  madly  at  the  window  of  the  Professor  of  Pastoral 
Theology.  "And  they  all  worked  off  horrid  little  academic 
scores  on  some  poor  devil  at  Queen's  who  had  the  hardihood 
to  publish  a  History  of  War  and  trespass  on  their  vile  pre- 
serves. Conspuez  les  accapareurs!"  His  voice  rose  with  a 
vibrant,  silver  ring,  and  through  the  archway  from  Peck 
came  a  roar  of  welcome  with  bilious  imitations  of  a  view- 
hallo.  "Summertown  must  be  giving  a  coffee-binge,"  he 
announced.  "Come  and  sing  to  'em,  George ! 

As  one  that  for  a  weary  space  hath  dined 
Lulled  by  the  voice  of  disappointed  dons.     .     .    ." 

He  broke  from  me  and  joined  the  coffee-party  at  a  hand- 
gallop,  to  be  greeted  by  the  solicitous  inquiries  of  a  generation 
which  held  that  a  dinner  unsucceeded  by  real  or  assumed 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    1 1 1 

intoxication  might  be  "a  good  dinner  enough,  to  be  sure,  but 
.  .  .  not  a  dinner  to  ask  a  man  to." 

"What  sort  of  a  blind  was  it,  Raney?"  asked  onej 
"Where's  Flint?  Paralytic,  I  suppose?  Don't  run  about  on 
a  full  stomach  or  you'll  be  'ick." 

I  had  good  opportunity  of  studying  "disappointed  dons" 
when  I  happened  to  spend  a  week-end  in  Oxford  a  short  time 
after  Campbell-Bannerman  had  broken  down  and  resigned. 
Without  exception  everyone  I  met  who  had  been  the  new  Prime 
Minister's  contemporary  at  Balliol  regarded  himself  as  a 
premier  Manque.  "I  remember  when  I  was  up  with  Asquith 
..."  they  all  began.  "Asquith  and  I  came  up  together," 
one  man  told  me.  "We  got  first  in  Mods,  the  same  term,  sat 
next  each  other  in  the  Schools,  were  viva'ed  together  and 
took  our  firsts  in  Greats  together.  Then,  of  course,  he  went 
to  the  Bar,  and  I" — a  little  bitterly — "I  thought  of  going  to 
the  Bar,  too,  but  they  offered  me  this  fellowship,  and  I've 
been  here  ever  since  lecturing  on  the  Republic  of  Plato." 

When  once  O'Rane  was  at  the  piano  I  did  not  trouble  my 
head  with  the  shortcomings  of  the  Senior  Common  Room. 
Flinging  away  the  end  of  his  cigar  he  struck  a  chord.  "If  that 
fat,  bourgeoise-looking  fellow  Loring  will  get  me  my  guitar, 
I'll  sing  something  you've  never  heard  before,"  he  said;  and 
when  the  guitar  was  brought,  "I  heard  a  girl  singing  it  in 
a  fishing-boat  on  the  Gulf  of  Corinth."  He  sang  in  modern 
Greek,  and  at  the  end  broke  into  a  fiery  declamation  of  "The 
Isles  of  Greece,"  and  from  that  passed  on  to  wild,  unpolished 
folk-songs  and  tales  of  Irish  kings  before  the  hapless  Norman 
invasion — utterly  wanting  in  self-consciousness,  and  hanging 
tale  to  the  heels  of  tale,  each  arrayed  in  language  of  greater 
splendour  than  the  last. 

It  is  thirteen  years  since  I  heard  him,  but  the  thrilling 
voice  and  shining  black  eyes  are  as  fresh  to  my  memory  as 
though  it  were  yesterday.  Of  the  silent,  lazy  half-circle  in  the 
wicker  chairs,  fully  two-thirds  have  fallen  in  the  war;  of  the 
rest,  Travers  has  gone  to  the  Treasury,  Simson  and  Gates  are 
in  orders,  and  Carnaby,  whom  I  still  see  leaning  against  the 
piano  and  still  shaking  with  his  little  dry  cough,  nearly  broke 


ii2  SONIA 

O'Rane's  heart  by  dying  of  phthisis  before  he  was  three-and- 
twenty.  I  met  him  in  Mentone  during  the  last  weeks  of  his 
life.  "Give  little  Raney  my  love,"  he  panted.  "He  made 
Oxford  for  me." 

Sometimes  I  think  O'Rane  with  his  invincible  sociability 
'made'  Oxford  for  a  good  many  people.  His  rooms — in 
Loring's  phrase — were  like  a  gathering  of  the  Aborigines  Pro- 
tection Society,  and  he  was  always  pressing  us  to  meet  his  new 
discoveries.  "D'you  know  Blackwell  ?"  he  would  ask.  "Lives 
in  Meadows,  rather  a  clever  fellow.  He's  a  bit  shy  and 
not  much  to  look  at,  but  there's  .  .  .  there's  .  .  .  there's 
good  stuff  in  him." 

Loring  invariably  declined  such  invitations,  but  he  picked 
up  the  formula  and  parodied  it. 

"Raney!"  he  would  call  from  the  window-seat  of  the 
digs.  "Come  over  here,  little  man.  There's  a  fellow  down 
here  I  want  you  to  meet.  He's  not  much  to  look  at,  but 
there's  .  .  .  there's  good  stuff  in  him.  That's  the  merchant, 
accumulating  cigarette  ends  out  of  the  gutter.  He's  a  bit 
elderly,  and  he's  come  down  in  the  world  rather,  but  in  a 
properly  organized  Democratic  Brotherhood  .  .  .  You  under- 
sized little  beast,  you've  nearly  killed  my  best  Siamese! 
Come  here,  Christabel,  and  don't  pay  any  attention  to  the 
off-scourings  of  the  Irish  bogs.  One  of  these  days,  Kitty, 
we'll  save  up  our  pennies  and  buy  a  dwarf  wild-ass  and  keep 
her  in  a  cage  and  call  her  Raney."  And  at  that,  of  course, 
O'Rane  would  begin  the  process  of  what  he  called  "taking 
the  lid  off  hell." 

On  sont  les  neiges  d'antan?  Within  six  weeks  we  were 
scattered,  and  in  twice  six  years  I  never  recaptured  that  "first 
fine  careless  rapture"  of  living  hourly  in  company  with 
Loring  and  O'Rane,  the  two  men  whom  I  most  loved  in  the 
world.  The  date  of  the  final  schools  drew  on  apace,  and 
when  they  were  past  we  underwent  limpness  and  reaction 
for  a  day.  Only  one  day,  for  as  we  sat  down  to  dinner 
Loring  said  with  a  forced,  uneasy  smile  that  only  half-hid  his 
emotion,  "George,  d'you  appreciate  we've  only  got  six  days 
more  ?" 


"3 

"Don't  talk  about  it!"  I  exclaimed. 

"Six  days.  H'm.  I  say,  why  shouldn't  we  stay  up  another 
year  and  read  Law  or  something?' 

I  shook  my  head. 

"All  our  year's  going  down  and  the  digs,  are  taken. 
'Sides,  it'll  be  just  as  bad  in  a  year's  time." 

We  faced  our  fate,  only  determining  to  alleviate  it  by 
making  good  use  of  the  last  moments.  The  House  was  giving 
a  ball  and,  as  I  was  one  of  the  stewards,  I  can  say  that  we 
treated  ourselves  generously  in  the  allotment  of  tickets. 
Lady  Loring  was  to  chaperon  our  party,  and  by  a  triumph 
of  organization  we  found  beds  for  all  at  '93D.'  Between 
Schools  and  Commem.  there  were  a  thousand  things  to  do, 
from  the  arrangement  of  valedictory  dinners  to  the  return  of 
borrowed  volumes  and  the  sale  of  innumerable  text-books. 
By  our  last  Sunday  all  was  clear,  and  we  invited  O'Rane  to 
punt  us  as  far  up  the  Cher  as  he  could  get  between  ten  and 
one. 

"It's  not  been  bad  fun,"  Loring  observed,  as  we  glided 
out  of  the  Isis  and  O'Rane  began  to  struggle  with  a  muddy 
bottom  and  an  adverse  current.  "Damn*  good  fun,  in  fact," 
he  added  with  emphasis.  "What  are  you  going  to  do  now, 
George  ?" 

"I've  not  the  foggiest  conception,"  I  said. 

The  Congested  Districts  Board  was  relieving  me  of  land 
and  personal  labour  in  Ireland,  but,  as  it  paid  me  probably 
more  than  I  should  have  secured  in  the  open  market,  there 
seemed  little  point  in  my  superfluously  trying  to  earn  a  live- 
lihood in  any  of  the  professions.  Sometimes  I  thought  of 
improving  my  mind  by  a  year's  travel,  sometimes  I  thought 
of  occupying  time  by  reading  for  the  Bar — more  usually, 
however,  I  waited  for  something  to  turn  up. 

"What  about  you?"  I  asked.  "Are  you  going  to  take 
Burgess's  advice?" 

"And  bury  myself  as  an  extra  attache  in  some  god-for- 
sake Embassy?  Not  if  I  know  it!  I  might  have,  before  the 
Guv'nor  died.  As  it  is,  I  shall  have  a  certain  amount  of 
property  to  manage  and  if  you  Radicals  ever  come  back  I 


ii4  SONIA 

shall  go  down  and  wreck  your  rotten  Bills  a  bit.  Otherwise 
I  propose  to  live  the  life  of  beautiful  uselessness.  In  punting, 
as  in  everything  else,  our  little  man  seems  to  effect  the  mini- 
mum of  result  with  the  maximum  of  effort." 

Raney  drew  his  pole  out  of  the  water  and  splashed  us 
generously. 

"Hogs!"  he  observed  dispassionately. 

"Go  on  punting,  you  little  beast,  and  don't  mess  my 
flannels !" 

The  pole  was  dropped  back  and  the  punt  moved  slowly 
forward. 

"Yes,"  said  O'Rane,  "it's  very  sad,  but  you're  both  hogs. 
As  long  as  there's  a  full  trough  for  you  to  bury  your  snouts 
in.  .  .  .  Faugh !  the  sour  reek  of  the  pig-bucket  hangs  about 
the  bristles  of  your  chaps." 

"I'm  glad  I  used  to  thrash  you  at  school,"  I  said. 

"What  good  d'you  imagine  it  did  ?"  he  flung  back. 

"None  at  all,  but  I  don't  get  the  opportunity  now." 

He  punted  in  silence  under  Magdalen  Bridge  and  along 
the  side  of  Addison's  Walk.  When  we  had  shot  under  the 
bridge  by  the  bathing-place,  he  broke  silence  to  say : 

"I  wouldn't  go  through  that  first  term  again  for  some- 
thing! My  God,  I  was  miserable!  Up  in  dormitory  I  used 
to  wait  till  the  other  fellows  were  asleep  and  then  bury  my 
head  in  the  clothes  and  cry.  It  was  an  extraordinary  thing 
— frightfully  artificial.  I'd  have  died  rather  than  let  them 
hear  me;  so  I  hung  on — sort  of  biting  on  the  bullet — till 
it  was  quite  safe,  and,  when  they  were  sound  asleep,  out  it 
came.  I  don't  think  I've  ever  been  so  lonely  before  or  since. 
I  wanted  to  be  friends,  you  were  all  my  blood  and  breed — 
not  like  in  the  old  Chicago  days.  And  then — oh,  I  don't 
know,  everything  I  did  was  wrong,  and  you  all  seemed  such 
utter  fools.  .  .  .  Still,  I  won  through." 

"And  you  bear  no  malice?"  asked  Loring.  His  voice  had 
grdwn  suddenly  gentle. 

"On  your  account?"  O'Rane  laughed.  "Jim,  you've  been 
an  awful  good  friend  to  me." 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN   115 

"Most  of  your  troubles  are  your  dam'  silly  fault,  you 
know," 

"Yes,  I  suppose  they  are.  And  always  will  be.  And  I'll 
never,  never,  never  give  in  till  I  die !" 

Stooping  down  he  ran  the  pole  through  its  leather  loops, 
picked  up  a  paddle  and  seated  himself  on  the  box. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do,  little  man?"  Loring  asked, 
"when  you  go  down?" 

"Depends." 

"What  on?" 

"The  state  of  the  world,"  Raney  answered.  "As  soon  as 
I've  finished  here,  I've  got  money  to  make,  and  when  I've 
done  that,  I'm  going  to  marry  a  beautiful  wife.  And  then 
.  .  .  and  then  ...  I'm  not  quite  sure,  I've  only  seen  the 
surface  of  this  country.  Folk  here  have  been  real  good  to 
me ;  I'd  like  to  do  something  in  return.  I  ...  No,  Jim,  don't 
ask  me  to  tell  you.  Now  and  again  I  see  visions,  but  you're 
so  damned  unenthusiastic.  .  .  .  And  people  who  talk  about 
what  they're  going  to  do,  never  seem  to  do  anything  at  all. 
Wait  till  I've  got  something  to  show,  something  better  than 
a  'maximum  of  effort  and  a  minimum  of  result.  ..." 

"You've  not  done  badly  so  far,"  I  put  in. 

He  snorted  contemptuously. 

"If  you've  got  faith  ..." 

Loring  settled  himself  more  comfortably  on  the  cushions. 

"Didn't  you  once  have  a  turn-up  with  Burgess  on  that 
same  subject?"  he  inquired. 

"That  was  the  lunatic  faith  of  believing  things  you  can't 
prove !  My  faith  is  that  a  man  can  do  anything  he's  the  will 
to  do." 

Loring  clasped  his  hands  lazily  behind  his  head. 

"Where  do  you  find  his  star? — his  crazy  trust 
God  knows  through  what  or  in  what?    It's  alive 
And  shines  and  leads  him,  and  that's  all  we  want." 

The  lines  quoted,  he  yawned  and  began  to  fill  a  pipe.     "Tell 
me  about  your  tame  star,  Raney." 


n6  SONIA 

O'Rane  drew  in  to  the  bank,  shipped  his  paddle  and 
stepped  ashore. 

"Give  me  a  hand  in  getting  her  over  the  rollers,"  he  said. 
"Rough,  manual  labour's  all  you're  fit  for." 

"I'd  much  sooner  stay  here  and  be  wafted  over  by  an 
act  of  faith." 

"I'll  give  you  three  seconds  and  then  I  shall  take  the 
luncheon-basket,"  Raney  answered,  pulling  a  gold  turnip- 
watch  out  of  his  trouser  pocket.  It  was  the  first  but  not  the 
last  time  that  I  saw  it.  On  the  back  was  a  monogram  which 
could  with  some  difficulty  be  read  as  'L.  K.' — a  memorial  of 
Kossuth.  I  fancy  it  was  the  one  piece  of  personal  property 
that  O'Rane  carried  from  the  old  world  to  the  new. 

VII 

Our  party  for  Commem.  had  all  the  elements  of  failure. 
I  have  been  back  to  Oxford  three  or  four  times  since  1903, 
and  they  ordered  this  matter  better  than  in  my  day.  The 
go-as-you-please  spirit  of  London  society  spread  quickly,  and 
from  the  account  of  my  young  cousins,  the  Hunter-Oak- 
leigh  boys,  I  gather  that  of  late  years  a  man  would  invite 
one  girl  to  place  herself  under  the  shadowy  protection  of  an 
unknown  chaperon  and  spend  three  agreeable  days  and  nights 
dancing,  supping,  lunching  and  basking  on  the  river  in  his 
sole  company. 

We  were  less  enterprising  and  more  dutiful.  Any  sisters 
who  had  come  out  were  invited,  and  where  sisters  ran  short 
we  fell  back  on  cousins  or  family  friends  so  well  known  as 
to  retain  no  suggestion  of  romance.  There  were  five  men-^ 
Loring,  Dainton,  Summertown,  O'Rane  and  myself,  balanced 
by  Lady  Loring,  Lady  Amy,  a  Miss  Cressfield,  Sally  Farwell 
and  my  cousin  Violet.  It  was  understood  that  Loring  would 
want  to  dance  chiefly  with  my  cousin,  and  that  Dainton  and 
Miss  Cressfield  would  form  an  incomparable  alliance  of  sto- 
lidity and  silence;  Summertown,  who  had  injured  his  knee 
playing  polo,  volunteered  to  keep  Lady  Loring  amused ;  his 
sister,  Lady  Sally,  was  allotted  to  O'Rane ;  and  I  was  to  take 
charge  of  Amy  Loring. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN    117 

The  arrangement  looked  well  enough  on  paper,  but  I 
foresaw  serious  defects  in  the  working.  For  one  thing, 
O'Rane  and  his  victim  had  never  met;  for  another,  I  had 
seen  nothing  of  Amy  Loring  since  my  first  Commem.  On 
that  occasion — though,  Heaven  forgive  me!  I  was  but  nine- 
teen or  twenty — I  had  fallen  deeply  in  love  with  her,  and 
was  preparing  the  way  for  a  declaration  when  she  delib- 
erately dropped  some  remark  to  remind  me  of  the  difference 
in  our  religions.  After  that  we  rather  carefully  avoided  each 
other — till  by  degrees  we  felt  we  could  safely  become  friends 
again.  I  suppose  it  is  now  fifteen  years  since  she  cut  me 
short  and  spared  me  some  part  of  the  disappointment ;  neither 
of  us  has  married.  The  secret  was  our  own,  and  Loring 
was  innocent  of  irony  when  he  said,  "You  and  Amy  know 
each  other  by  now,  you'll  get  on  all  right." 

The  most  serious  menace  to  our  party  came  on  the  morn- 
ing of  the  first  ball.  Tom  Dainton  rushed  up  from  his  digs, 
in  Oriel  Street  to  tell  us  Miss  Cressfield  had  taken  to  her 
bed  with  an  internal  chill  and  would  be  unable  to  join  us. 

"Awful  bore !"  he  growled  in  his  deep  voice.  "Spoils  the 
numbers.  I'd  better  cry  off." 

"Can't  you  get  someone  in  her  place?"  I  asked. 

"At  this  time  of  day?    It  wouldn't  be  civil." 

Loring  took  me  into  a  corner  and  suggested  one  or  two 
names.  Our  difficulty  was  that  Tom  usually  trampled  his 
partners  under  foot  if  they  risked  dancing  with  him  and 
petrified  them  with  his  silence  if  they  begged  for  mercy  and 
sat  out. 

"Amy's  good  for  half -hour  spells  of  cricket  shop  if  he 
can  get 1  say,  Tom,  why  don't  you  ask  Sonia  up  ?" 

"Mater  wouldn't  let  her  come,"  he  boomed  in  reply. 
"She's  only  sixteen.  Not  out  yet." 

"  'Out'  be  damned !"  I  said.  "She  can  glue  her  hair  up 
for  two  nights.  I'll  see  she  gets  partners.  You  can  try  it 
anyway ;  we'll  send  a  round-robin  wire  to  Lady  Dainton." 

And  the  wire  was  sent,  signed  by  the  five  of  us.  An 
answering  wire  of  acceptance  was  delivered  at  luncheon,  and 
in  the  late  afternoon  a  touring-car  drew  up  outside  the  digs., 


ii8  SONIA 

and  a  slim  figure  in  dust-coat  and  motor-veil  ran  lightly  up 
the  stairs  with  a  steadying  hand  to  an  elaborate  but  still 
unstable  coiffure. 

"Lord  Loring,  it's  perfectly  ripping  of  you!"  Sonia  ex- 
claimed, as  he  and  I  met  her  at  the  stair-head. 

"You  needn't  call  me  Lord  Loring  even  if  your  hair  is 
up,"  he  answered,  as  they  shook  hands.  "It  was  'Loring' 
when  last  we  met." 

"Oh,  we  were  all  children  then!  How  do  you  do,  Mr. 
Oakleigh?" 

"Call  me  that  again  and  I  let  your  hair  down!"  I  said. 
"Let  me  introduce  you  to  Lady  Loring  and  the  rest  of  the 
party.  Then  you'll  have  to  go  and  dress  " 

I  hurried  through  the  introductions,  inspected  the  table 
in  the  dining-room  and  sought  that  corner  of  Loring's  bed- 
room to  which  I  had  been  banished  for  the  following  three 
nights.  There  was  a  wonderful  to-do  with  opening  and  shut- 
ting doors,  whisperings  and  exhortations,  lendings  and  bor- 
rowings, all  conducted  through  the  medium  of  Lady  Loring's 
ubiquitous  maid.  The  hour  of  dinner  was  reached  before 
the  party  began  to  assemble,  and  long  past  before  the  last 
laggard  had  appeared.  Lady  Loring,  white-haired,  plump  and 
unruffled,  caught  me  glancing  at  my  watch  and  took  me  aside. 

"George,  my  dear,  forgive  an  old  busybody  and  tell  me 
who  is  to  take  little  Miss  Dainton  in."  I  consulted  my  list 
and  found  that  the  honour  fell  to  Summertown.  "The  poor 
child's  so  nervous  she  daren't  come  down;  Amy's  trying  to 
comfort  her.  First  ball,  you  know.  Thinks  she  looks  a 
fright,  you  know.  If  you  can  give  her  a  little  confidence  .  .  ." 

"I'll  send  O'Rane  in  with  her,"  I  said.  "They've  known 
each  other  for  years." 

I  called  him  up  and  was  explaining  the  new  arrangement 
of  places  when  the  door  opened,  and  Sonia  came  in — white 
from  her  little  satin  slippers  to  the  band  of  silk  ribbon  round 
her  hair.  For  all  her  maturing  figure  she  scarce  looked  her 
boasted  sixteen  years :  the  oval  Madonna  face  and  beseeching 
brown  eyes  were  still  those  of  a  child.  When  last  I  saw  her, 
twelve  years  later,  there  was  hardly  an  appreciable  change 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN-  ENGLISHMAN    119 

in  her  appearance.  "George,  my  dear,  she  looks  like  a  baby 
angel,"  whispered  Lady  Loring,  as  I  gave  her  my  arm.  The 
rest  of  the  party  sorted  itself  into  pairs  and  followed  us. 
"Bambina,  you're  divine!"  I  heard  Raney  saying,  by  way  of 
inspiring  confidence.  Unlike  the  majority  of  such  remarks, 
this  one  was  free  of  exaggeration. 

As  a  rule  one  ball  is  very  much  like  another,  though  on 
this  occasion  there  were  one  or  two  differences.  As  a  steward 
I  displayed  much  fruitless  activity,  and  covered  miles  in 
search  of  some  heartless  A  who  had  told  a  tearful  Miss  B 
to  meet  him  "just  inside  the  door,"  where  traffic  was  most 
congested.  Anxious  friends  gripped  my  arm  with  an, — "I 
say,  old  man,  I'm  one  short.  D'you  feel  like  doing  the  Good 
Samaritan  touch?  She's  a  friend  of  my  sister's,  goes  over 
at  the  knee  a  bit,  but  otherwise  all  right.  I  don't  want  to  be 
stuck  with  her  the  whole  night."  Dowagers  petitioned  me 
to  have  the  windows  shut,  or  confided  the  disappearance  of 
a  brooch.  "So  long,  with  sapphires  here  and  here,  and  the 
pin  a  little  bent.  I've  had  it  for  years  and  wouldn't  lose  it 
for  anything." 

At  the  end  of  half  an  hour  I  retired  to  Summertown's 
rooms  in  Canterbury  and  changed  my  first  collar.  It  was 
unnecessary,  but  I  wished  to  present  an  appearance  of  strenu- 
ousness.  The  music  of  the  lancers  began  as  I  entered 
Tom  Quad,  and  pairs  of  figures,  garish  or  sombre  in  the 
evening  light,  hastened  their  leisurely  pace  along  the  broad 
terrace.  Sonia  met  me  by  appointment  at  the  door  of  the 
cathedral,  and  I  was  reluctantly  compelled  to  pilot  her  to 
O'Rane's  garret  in  Peck. 

"I  just  wanted  to  see  it,"  she  told  me,  as  we  tried  to  make 
ourselves  comfortable  in  the  most  Spartan  room  in  Oxford. 
Two  wicker  chairs,  a  table  without  a  cloth,  a  rickety  side- 
board and  a  bookcase  with  three  Reading  Room  books  were 
all  the  furniture ;  there  were  no  ornaments,  no  pictures,  and 
only  one  photograph — a  signed  snapshot  of  Sonia  paddling  a 
canoe  on  the  river  at  Crowley  Court. 

"It  was  very  tactful  of  him  to  put  the  photograph  out," 
I  said. 


120  SONIA 

"Doesn't  he  always  .  .  .  ?"  Sonia  began,  and  then  blushed. 

"Always,  Sonia,"  I  answered.  "I  was  only  teasing  you. 
Your're  rather  a  friend  of  his,  aren't  you?" 

She  nodded,  and  in  her  eyes  there  was  adoration  such  as 
is  given  few  men  to  inspire. 

"Has  he  ever  told  you  about  the  time  before  he  came  to 
England?"  she  asked. 

"Little  bits,"  I  said. 

"He  told  me  everything,"  she  answered  proudly, 

"I'm  sure  it  wasn't  all  fit  for  the  young " 

"I'm  not  young,  Mr.  Oakleigh." 

"And  I'm  sure  a  good  part  of  the  language  was — un- 
parliamentary, Miss  Dainton.  However,  that  by  the  way. 
He's  a  good  little  man " 

"You  are  patronizing !"  she  interrupted. 

"He's  a  man ;  he's  little — compared  with  Jim  Loring  or 
myself,  for  example " 

"He's  worth  more  than  you  and  Loring  put  together !" 

"Speaking  for  myself,  I  agree,"  I  said. 

"There's  nothing  he  can't  do !" 

"He's  done  pretty  well  so  far,"  I  conceded,  and  lit  a 
cigarette. 

"It's  nothing  to  what  he  will  do.  After  Oxford  he's 
going  to  set  out  to  seek  his  fortune," — Sonia  had  dropped  into 
the  very  language  of  a  fairy-story.  "And  when  he  comes 
back " 

"You'll  marry  him,"  I  said  at  a  venture. 

"Yes." 

"When  was  all  this  fixed  up?"  I  asked. 

She  held  out  her  left  hand  to  me;  the  third  finger  was 
encircled  with  a  piece  of  blue  ribbon.  "To-night." 

"He  bagged  that  off  the  cheese-straws  at  dinner,"  I  said. 

"I  don't  care  if  he  did,"  she  answered. 

"It'll  wash  off  in  the  bath  to-morrow  morning." 

There  was  a  sound  of  feet  ascending  the  stairs  three  steps 
at  a  time.  The  door  was  flung  open,  and  O'Rane  burst  into 
the  room. 

"I  shall  keep  it  as  long  as  I  live,"  Sonia  declared. 


O'Rane  pointed  an  accusing  finger  at  her. 

"Bambina,  what  d'you  mean  by  cutting  me?"  he  de- 
manded. 

"Is  it  time?    I've  been  telling  George " 

He  threw  his  arms  round  her,  bent  down  and  kissed  her  on 
the  lips. 

"What's  the  good  of  telling  him?  What's  the  good  of 
telling  anyone?  They  don't  understand.  Nobody  but  you 
and  me.  .  .  .  George,  I  suppose  you  know  that  in  addition 
to  being  frightfully  in  the  way,  you're  cutting  Lady  Amy?" 

I  threw  away  my  cigarette  and  made  for  the  door. 

"In  the  words  of  my  tutor,  the  estimable  Mr.  Templeton," 
I  said,  "Thees  ees  erl  vary  irraygular,  Meester  O'Reene.  I 
think  I  shall  go  and  tell  Lady  Loring,  Sonia,  and  leave  her 
to  break  it  to  your  parents." 

Sonia  clasped  her  hands  in  supplication. 

"Dear  George,  don't  be  mean !    It's  an  absolute  secret !" 

"You  can  tell  it  to  the  Devil  himself  for  all  I  care!" 
cried  O'Rane  in  defiance. 

The  only  person  to  whom,  in  fact,  I  told  the  news  was  Amy 
Loring. 

"But  how  absurd!"  she  exclaimed.  "Sonia's  only  a  child. 
He's  not  much  more  than  a  boy  himself." 

"Time  will  work  wonders,"  I  said. 

"But  will  he  have  anything  to  marry  on?" 

"He's  never  had  a  shilling  to  call  his  own  since  he  was 
thirteen  and  a  half.  It's  just  the  sort  of  thing  he  would  do." 

Lady  Amy  shook  her  head,  unconvinced. 

"It  isn't  fair  on  her.  I  know  David,  I'm  awfully  fond 
of  him ;  I  think  he's  really  brave,  and  I  should  quite  expect 

any  girl  to  fall  in  love  with  him.  But "  she  shook  her 

head  again.  "I  mean,  they're  too  young  to  know  what 
they're  talking  about ;  this  is  the  first  time  she's  had  her  hair 
up.  If  I  were  Lady  Dainton,  I  should  give  her  a  good  talking 
to." 

"But  it's  a  dead  and  utter  secret,"  I  reminded  her.  "I 
don't  suppose  Lady  Dainton  will  hear  anything  about  it  till 
it's  all  over." 


122  SONIA 

"Till  they're  married?"  she  asked  in  dismay. 

"Yes." 

"Or  till  it's  broken  off?" 

"Raney's  not  likely  to  break  it  off!" 

"She  may.  You  must  remember  he's  about  the  only 
man  she's  ever  met." 

The  band  struck  up  the  opening  bars  of  a  new  waltz,  and 
we  returned  to  the  ballroom,  leaving  the  subject  of  our  con- 
versation to  take  care  of  itself.  Contact  with  O'Rane  always 
made  me  fatalistic  and  more  than  naturally  helpless. 


CHAPTER  III 

BERTRAND   OAKLEIGH 

"The  common  problem,  yours,  mine,  everyone's, 
Is — not  to  fancy  what  were  fair  in  life 
Provided  it  could  be, — but,  finding  first 
What  may  be,  then  find  how  to  make  it  fair 
Up  to  our  means:  a  very  different  thing! 
No  abstract  intellectual  plan  of  life 
Quite  irrespective  of  life's  plainest  laws, 
But  one,  a  man,  who  is  man  and  nothing  more, 
May  lead  within  a  world  which   (by  your  leave) 
Is  Rome  or  London,  not  Fool's-Paradise. 
Embellish  Rome,  idealize  away, 
Make  Paradise  of  London  if  you  can, 
You're  welcome,  nay,  you're  wise." 

ROBERT  BROWNING,  "Bishop  Blougram's  Apology." 


1LEFT  Oxford  with  a  sense  of  oppressive  loneliness. 
It  was  not  entirely  the  sorrow  of  parting  from  a  place 
I  had  for  four  years  loved  but  too  well ;  it  was  not 
altogether  the  prospect  of  making  a  fresh  start — I  was  pleas- 
urably  excited  by  that;  the  feeling  of  forlornness  arose, 
I  think,  from  the  recognition  that  the  next  step  would  have 
to  be  taken  alone.  I  suppose  I  am  shy;  certainly  I  lack  in- 
itiative. There  had  hitherto  always  been  someone  to  keep 
me  in  countenance — Loring  at  my  private  school,  at  Melton 
and,  later,  at  Oxford,  and  there  had  always  been  someone 
to  act  as  a  stimulus.  At  one  time  it  was  Burgess,  who  laid 

123 


i24  SONIA 

the  foundation  of  any  knowledge  I  have  gleaned,  and  made 
me  as  temperate,  passionless  and  sterile  as  I  have  become — 
as  deeply  imbued,  perhaps,  with  the  indifference  that  mas- 
querades as  toleration. 

At  another  time  I  was  stirred  from  philosophic  doubt 
by  the  fanaticism  of  O'Rane.  The  fire  he  lit  burned  too 
brightly  to  last,  but  by  strange  irony  as  it  began  to  flicker 
I  came  under  the  influence  of  my  guardian  Bertrand  Oakleigh, 
a  man  so  disillusioned  that  in  very  factiousness  of  opposition 
I  was  driven  to  fan  the  dying  embers  of  my  young  enthusiasms. 
My  intimate  acquaintance  with  him  began  in  the  autumn  of 
1904,  some  fifteen  months  after  I  had  come  down.  In  the 
interval  I  must  admit  to  a  feeling  of  intellectual  homelessness. 

The  last  moments  of  the  Oxford  phase  came  at  the  end  of 
July  after  six  weeks  in  Ireland  with  my  mother.  I  returned 
to  London  and  picked  up  Loring,  and  the  two  of  us  presented 
ourselves  for  our  vivas.  There  was  little  worthy  of  record 
in  my  own  case.  A  fat-faced  man  in  a  B.D.  hood  opened 
at  random  the  Index  and  Epitome  to  the  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  turned  the  leaves,  shut  the  book  with 
a  snap  and  called  my  name.  For  perhaps  six  minutes  I  drew 
on  my  imagination  for  the  early  life  of  the  Young  Pretender ; 
then  in  an  oily,  well-fed  voice  my  examiner  remarked,  "Thank 
you.  That  will  do."  I  disliked  the  voice,  I  disliked  the  man. 
He  is  probably  a  bishop  now. 

When  my  own  ordeal  was  over  I  strolled  round  the  Schools 
to  see  how  the  Greats  men  were  getting  on.  To  my  delight 
I  found  Loring  in  the  middle  of  his  viva — or  perhaps  it  would 
be  more  accurate  to  say  the  viva  was  in  progress,  for  I  have 
no  idea  when  it  started.  Maradick  of  Corpus  was  examining, 
and  everyone  seemed  to  be  enjoying  himself.  The  candidate 
was  leaning  back  with  his  chair  tilted  at  an  angle  and  his 
thumbs  in  the  armholes  of  his  waistcoat ;  so  far  as  a  lay  man 
could  judge  he  was  making  out  an  effective  case  against  the 
Pragmatism  of  William  James,  of  which,  by  an  appropriate 
coincidence,  Maradick  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  greatest 
living  exponents.  The  scornful  demolition  went  on  unchecked 
until  Loring  introduced  some  such  name  as  Miisseldorf . 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  125 

"Who?"  interrupted  Maradick. 

"Miisseldorf .  Johan  Miisseldorf  of  Niirnburg.  Died  about 
1830.  It's  his  'Prolegomena'  I'm  quoting.  He  exploded  Prag- 
matism before  James  was  born." 

"Exploded  ?  Well,  er  .  .  .  that's  as  may  be.  I  remember 
now  you  mentioned  him  in  one  of  your  papers.  He's  not 
very  well  known  in  this  country." 

"I  don't  know  about  this  country,"  Loring  rejoined. 
"He's  shamefully  neglected  in  this  university.  Yet  he  un- 
doubtedly anticipated  Schopenhauer  on  Will.  Or  if  you  look 
at  Lincke's  'Note  on  Berkeley's  Subjective  Idealism'  ..." 

"Lincke,  did  you  say?"  inquired  another  of  the  exam- 
iners. 

The  remainder  of  that  viva  has  passed  into  history,  and 
when  I  went  up  to  take  my  M.A.  three  years  later  the  story 
was  told  me  of  three  different  people.  On  the  last  day  of 
the  written  work,  Loring  had  expressed  dissatisfaction  with 
his  papers,  and  I  heard  later  that  when  he  began  his  viva 
the  examiners  regarded  him  as  a  hopeless,  unsalvageable 
third.  They  asked  formal  questions,  and  he  replied  by  bur- 
lesquing such  of  their  lecture  theories  as  he  had  picked  up  at 
second  hand.  It  was  by  pure  chance  that  he  mentioned 
Miisseldorf,  but  the  awe  of  unfamiliarity  with  which  the 
name  was  received  led  him  to  try  experiments  with  the  mass 
of  mid-nineteenth  century  metaphysics  that  for  two  years 
I  had  seen  him  reading  in  the  window-seats  of  "93D"  or 
reciting  of  an  evening  to  a  restless  Siamese  kitten. 

I  arrived  in  time  to  see  the  three  examiners  taking  counsel 
together,  while  Loring  looked  on  with  the  good-natured  tol- 
erance of  a  man  who  is  prepared  to  give  up  his  whole  day  in 
a  good  cause. 

"We  think,  my  colleagues  and  I,"  said  Maradick  at  length, 
"that  this  discussion  had  better  be  continued  in  another 
room.  Perhaps  you  will  come  this  way  with  me  ?  We  should 
like  to  hear  you  more  fully  on  this  subject,  but  of  course 
there  are  other  candidates  to  consider." 

I  have  only  Loring's  unchecked,  picturesque  narrative  of 
what  took  place  during  the  next  hour,  as  I  was  not  sure 


•  126  SONIA 

whether  the  public  was  admitted  to  this  private,  auricular  ex- 
amination. 

"They'll  give  me  a  first  on  that,"  he  predicted,  as  we 
walked  up  the  High  together.  "Bound  tol  Oh,  it  was  one 
of  our  better  vivas !  I  hauled  out  every  German  philosopher 
I'd  ever  heard  of,  and  a  fair  sprinkling  that  I  made  up  on  the 
spot,  carefully  adding  an  outline  of  their  work  and  pointing 
out  where  they  differed  from  our  esteemed  old  friend  Lincke. 
Maradick  don't  know  much  about  modern  German  meta- 
physics, and  he  knows  a  dam'  sight  less  about  the  German 
language.  I  quoted  long  passages  to  establish  my  points,  and 
when  I  couldn't  think  of  any  to  suit,  I  just  made  'em  up! 
I'd  no  idea  my  German  was  so  fluent.  If  they  don't  give  me 
a  first,  I'll  expose  Maradick  for  pretending  to  recognize  quota- 
tions from  two  non-existent  authors  named  Frischmann  and 
Reichwald  respectively."  He  led  the  way  to  the  station  with 
an  obvious  sense  of  a  good  day's  work  done. 

I  imagine  that  every  man,  before  he  attains  wisdom,  en- 
dures a  part  or  the  whole  of  a  walking  tour.  O'Rane  had 
propounded  the  idea  in  the  course  of  our  last  term,  and  his 
eloquence  was  sufficient  to  shake  even  Loring.  On  leaving 
Oxford  we  repaired  to  House  of  Steynes,  where  Raney  was 
awaiting  us  with  a  haversack  and  ash-plant,  and  without 
giving  our  enthusiasm  a  chance  to  cool  we  struck  south  with 
no  more  destination  nor  time-limit  than  was  implied  in  the 
determination  to  walk  until  we  quarrelled  or  grew  tired  of 
walking.  It  is  a  tribute  to  our  friendship  that  three  weeks 
later  we  reached  Loring  Castle,  Chepstow,  unsundered  and 
harmonious. 

There  was,  I  suppose,  too  much  variety  for  us  to  grow 
weary  of  each  other's  society.  Marching  without  map  or 
time-table,  we  billeted  ourselves  for  the  night  on  any  friend 
we  encountered  on  the  way,  and  when  none  was  available 
we  put  up  at  the  first  hotel  that  promised  adequate  bathing 
accommodation.  Our  kit  was  not  immoderate — brushes, 
razors,  sponges  and  pyjamas.  When  we  needed  clean  clothes 
we  bought  them,  and  got  rid  of  the  old  through  the  parcels 
post.  This  last  was  the  only  matter  of  disagreement  between 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  127 

us,  for  Loring  professed  an  overwhelming  desire  to  heap  un- 
welcome gifts  on  the  unsuspecting  men  who  chanced  to  be  in 
the  public  eye  at  the  moment. 

"I've  walked  clean  through  these  boots,"  I  remember  his 
remarking  one  night  at  Windermere,  as  I  yawned  through 
an  attack  on  the  current  Education  Bill  in  a  fiery  local  organ. 
"George,  d'you  think  your  friend  Dr.  Clifford  would  like 
some  capital  brown  bootings?  Or  Lord  Hugh  Cecil?"  He 
seized  the  paper  from  my  hands  and  turned  the  pages  thought- 
fully. "Eugene  Sandow!  That  does  it!  Why,  it  may  be 
his  birthday  to-morrow  for  all  you  know !"  And  it  was  only 
by  concerted  physical  force  that  we  restrained  him. 

The  result  of  our  Schools  reached  us  at  Shrewsbury :  Lor- 
ing had  got  a  first  and  I  a  second. 

"It's  one  in  the  eye  for  dear  old  Burgess,"  he  remarked, 
when  we  congratulated  him.  "I  shall  go  down  to  Melton 
next  term  and  ask  for  an  extra  half,  just  to  score  him  off. 
And  now  I  really  can  take  things  easily." 

"Why  don't  you  stand  for  a  fellowship?"  I  asked.  I 
remembered  his  dread  of  leaving  Oxford  and  found  it  in  my 
heart  to  envy  him  his  chance  of  living  on  and  off  in — say 
All  Souls  for  another  half-dozen  years. 

"Why  in  God's  name  should  I?"  he  demanded.  "I've 
satisfied  myself,  and  anyone  else  who's  interested  in  the  sub- 
ject, that  I've  got  some  ability.  Now  the  only  artistic  thing 
is  to  waste  it.  There's  no  distinction  in  belonging  to  an  effete 
aristocracy  unless  people  can  be  induced  to  think  you're 
being  thrown  away.  I'm  going  to  be  a  Dreadful  Object 
Lesson." 

He  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  yawned  and  sat  with  closed 
eyes  until  we  roused  him. 

"Seriously,  what  are  you  going  to  do?"  O'Rane  inquired. 

Loring  adopted  the  manner  of  a  Hyde  Park  orator. 

"Live  abroad,"  he  said,  "and  squander  the  rents  that  I 
wring  from  the  necessitous  poor.  Come  back  in  time  to  shoot 
the  birds  or  hunt  the  foxes  that  have  overrun  my  tenants' 
land.  Go  down  to  the  House  once  every  few  years  to  vote 
against  democratic  measures.  Marry  an  actress  of  question- 


128  SONIA 

able  virtue  and  die,  leaving  a  son  who  has  only  to  take  the 
trouble  to  be  born  in  order  to  become  an  hereditary  legislator 
and  a  permanent  obstacle  to  the  People's  Will.  It'll  be  very 
hard  work,  but  someone  must  do  it,  or  Drury  Lane  and  the 
Liberal  Publication  Department  would  have  to  close  down. 
That's  what's  expected  of  tenth  transmitters  of  foolish  faces, 
isn't  it,  George  ?" 

"It's  the  least  you  can  do,"  I  assured  him. 

"And  the  most.  That's  the  sad  part  about  it."  His  face 
grew  reflective  and  his  voice  lost  its  note  of  banter.  "Time 
was  when  I  hugged  delusions  and  called  them  ideals.  I 
used  to  think  there  was  room  in  the  body  politic  for  men  who 
were  rich  enough  and  high  placed  enough  to  be  quite  inde- 
pendent of  party  considerations, — men  who  could  wait  and 
take  long  views,  men  without  seats  to  lose  or  constituents  to 
bother  about,  men  who  couldn't  be  bought  because  there  was 
nothing  big  enough  to  offer  them.  The  enormous  majority  of 
M.P.'s  go  into  politics  for  what  they  can  get  out  of  them — 
legal  jobs,  office,  local  honour  and  glory — and  it  gets  worse 
every  time  another  poor  man  is  elected.  They  can't  afford  to 
wait,  these  poor  men ;  therefore  they  can  hold  no  independent 
view ;  therefore  they'll  accept  any  dam',  dirty,  dishonest  shift 
their  leaders  may  suggest.  And  so  public  life  gets  more 
sordid  every  day." 

I  suggested  that  with  all  its  faults  our  English  public  life 
was  still  ethically  the  cleanest  in  the  world  and  was  so  far 
from  consistently  deteriorating  that  it  was  still  some  way 
above  eighteenth-century  England.  If  he  found  it  corrupt  it 
was  for  him  to  raise  it  to  his  ideal. 

"My  dear  George,"  he  answered,  "the  ideal  perished  on 
the  day  I  discovered  Unionists  and  Radicals  both  talking  of 
'big  views'  and  'the  higher  patriotism'  and  at  the  same  time 
helping  themselves  out  of  the  public  purse.  No,  no!  Suave 
vnari  magno.  I  shall  endeavor  not  to  marry  the  actress  of 
questionable  virtue,  but  I  shan't  attempt  to  etherialize  politics. 
They're  too  dirty,  for  one  thing,  and  they're  too  dam'  dull  for 
another." 

He  might  have  added  that  they  were  too  uncertain.     In 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  1 29 

twenty  years'  tolerably  close  observation  it  is  the  unexpected 
changes  of  politics  that  impress  me  most — the  big  Bills  that 
evoke  none  of  the  expected  opposition,  the  little  Bills  that 
break  Ministries,  the  inflation  or  sudden  pricking  of  a  repu- 
tation, the  constant  shifting  and  re-arranging  of  parties.  Ten 
days  after  Loring's  criticism  of  politics  on  the  score  of  their 
dullness,  the  three  of  us  were  at  Chepstow  waiting  for  the 
weather  to  mend  before  pushing  on  to  London.  The  Khaki 
Parliament  does  not  rank  high  among  periods  of  consum- 
mate human  dignity;  its  birth  was  overshadowed  and  em- 
barassed  by  the  South  African  War;  its  early  and  middle 
life  were  given  over  to  Education  and  Licensing  Bills  of  which 
I  imagine  even  their  authors  were  not  unduly  proud.  Then 
without  warning  came  the  news  that  Chamberlain  had  declared 
for  Mercantilism,  Protection,  Fair-Trade — whatever  name 
was  dug  out  of  the  economy  primers  before  the  movement 
was  baptized  with  the  name  of  Tariff  Reform. 

The  Unionist  party  divided,  prominent  Ministers  left  the 
Cabinet  and  a  battle  royal  raged  between  "Free  Fooders"  and 
"Whole  Hoggers,"  while  the  Tariff  Commission  scoured  the 
business  centres  of  the  kingdom  in  search  of  evidence  to  sup- 
port the  Chamberlain  indictment.  To  the  layman  it  seemed 
as  if  Mr.  Balfour's  continued  tenure  of  office  could  be  count- 
ed by  weeks,  and  as  "General  Election"  came  back  to  men's 
lips,  political  interest  revived  throughout  the  country  and 
there  arose  a  lust  for  Social  Reform,  only  comparable  to  the 
famous  summer  weeks  of  the  French  National  Convention. 

My  interest  in  politics,  long  confined  to  sterile  criticism 
of  the  Education  and  Licensing  Acts  enlivened  by  fierce  de- 
nunciation of  the  Government's  indentured  labour  in  South 
Africa,  became  of  a  sudden  constructive,  vital  and  effective. 
Returning  to  town  in  October  I  took  rooms  in  King  Street,  St. 
James's  and  resuscitated  the  Thursday  Club.  The  Government 
had  a  wonderful  knack  of  shamming  death  and  never  dying, 
and  in  1903  we  seemed  within  a  month  or  two  of  dissolution. 
A  comprehensive  programme  was  needed,  and  speaking  for 
Youth,  Liberalism,  Oxford,  we  rushed  into  print  with  our 
"Thursday  Essays." 


130  SONIA 

I  can  see  now  that  there  was  little  originality  in  the  book. 
Half -unconsciously  we  hearkened  to  the  voices  that  were 
murmuring  round  about  us  and,  with  the  impetuosity  of 
youth,  always  went  one  better  than  anyone  else,  including, 
at  a  late  date,  the  official  programme-mongers  headed  by 
the  new  Liberal  Prime  Minister  at  the  Albert  Hall.  Campbell- 
Bannerman  might  postpone  the  settlement  of  Ireland,  but 
we  were  not  so  faint-hearted;  Mr.  Birrell  might  plead  for 
Simple  Bible  Teaching  as.  a  solution  of  the  religious  education 
difficulty,  we  boldly  declared  for  secularism,  and  so  through- 
out our  six  or  eight  chapters. 

Glancing  at  the  old  "Essays"  with  their  Oxford  omniscience 
and  glittering  epigram,  their  logic — and  faith  in  logic,  their 
assurance  and  perfervidity,  I  feel  very  old  or  very  young, 
I  am  not  sure  which.  We  Liberal  Leaguers  of  1903  were 
to  have  so  strange  a  history  in  the  next  ten  years.  The  old 
Radicalism  of  Boer  War  days,  the  Peace-Retrenchment-and- 
Reform  Radicalism  was,  in  1903,  hardly  respectable:  we 
thought  as  "imperially"  as  the  truest  Chamberlain  stalwart. 
Dilke,  with  his  "Greater  Britain,"  was  our  pattern  Radical 
statesman,  and  the  Federation  of  the  Empire  took  place  of 
honour  in  our  manifesto.  By  a  curious  irony  the  1906  election 
was  too  successful:  there  were  too  many  Noncomformists 
seeking  to  recast  Education  and  Suppress  Beer,  too  many 
Labour  men  with  visions  of  expensive  Social  Reform.  The 
Liberal  League — most  gentlemanly  of  parties — was  captured ; 
its  leaders  retained  their  positions  of  command  by  under- 
taking to  push  other  people's  Bills.  Not  till  the  Great  War 
broke  out  did  they  come  to  their  own  agaiq. 

Dilke  was  our  model  abroad,  but,  when  the  vociferous, 
Radico-Labour-Nonconformist  majority  demanded  Social  Re- 
form and  a  new  heaven  and  earth,  we  were  constrained  to  seek 
fresh  guidance.  We  found  it  in  the  Webb  handbooks  for 
bureaucrats.  With  their  stupendous  mastery  of  detail,  their 
analysis  and  classification,  their  prescriptions  for  every  variety 
of  social  ill,  they  were  an  incomparable  vade-mecum  for  legis- 
lators in  a  hurry.  They  appealed  to  the  lazy  man  and  the 
Oxford  mind.  I  remember  my  relief  some  years  later  in 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  131 

reading  "The  Break-up  of  the  Poor  Law,"  for  unemployment 
had  never  seemed  easy  till  I  found  the  industrial  population 
divided  by  percentages,  ticketed  and  mobilized,  ultimately 
pressed  into  penal  colonies  in  the  case  of  recalcitrancy.  I  had 
a  perfect  scheme  cooked,  eaten  and  digested  for  the  Labour 
man  who  demanded  unemployment  legislation  and  the  silly- 
season  correspondent  who  inquired  in  general  terms  whether 
the  unemployed  were  not  really  the  unemployable.  The  Webb 
influence  was  paramount  in  the  meetings  of  the  Thursday 
Club,  and  in  our  essays  on  Social  Reform  I  trace  a  Webb- 
derived  mechanical  conception  of  the  State,  a  lust  for  sweeping 
legislation,  a  disregard  for  mere  flesh  and  blood  and  a  growing 
reliance  on  governmental  control  and  coercion. 

Our  book  was  produced  in  1904,  but  I  did  not  wait  to 
assist  at  its  publication.  In  the  autumn  of  1903  my  eyesight 
— never  strong — underwent  one  of  its  eclipses,  and  my  doctor 
ordered  me  a  sea-voyage.  For  a  year  I  wandered  round  the 
world,  still  full  enough  of  the  Dilke  ideal  to  make  special 
study  of  British  colonies  and  possessions  abroad.  I  went 
alone,  because  Lofing,  one  of  the  few  acceptable  companions 
with  money  and  leisure  to  spare,  answered  my  invitation  in 
Dr.  Johnson's  words:  "No  man  will  be  a  sailor  who  has 
contrivance  enough  to  get  himself  into  a  jail:  for  being  in  a 
ship  is  being  in  jail  with  a  chance  of  being  drowned.  ...  A, 
man  in  a  jail  has  more  room,  better  food,  and  commonly  better 
company."  The  Daintons,  however,  who  were  wintering  in 
Cairo,  travelled  with  me  as  far  as  Alexandria. 

A  couple  of  days  before  we  started  I  went  down  to  Crowley 
Court  to  join  them.  Tom,  who  had  lately  bought  himself 
a  small  car,  motored  his  brother  and  O'Rane  over  from  Oxford, 
to  say  good-bye.  They  returned  the  same  evening,  but  in 
their  brief  visit  there  was  time  for  an  embarrassing  upheaval. 
I  noticed  that  Lady  Dainton  was  rather  flushed  and  ill  at  ease 
during  luncheon,  and  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon  O'Rane 
gave  me  the  reason. 

"She's  a  damned,  interfering  meddler!"  he  burst  out,  with 
no  other  introduction  to  the  subject.  "Lady  Dainton,  of 


SONIA 

course,  who  else?  She  had  the  cheek  to  tell  me  she  didn't 
like  my  writing  to  Sonia  so  much." 

"What's  her  objection?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  Sonia's  too  young,  and  speaking  as  her  mother — 
my  God,  I  thought  that  ullage  was  kept  for  penny  novelettes ! 
The  girl  of  the  present  day  .  .  .  Well,  the  long  and  the  short 
of  it  was — I  didn't  mean  to — but  I  told  her  Sonia  and  I  were 
engaged.  That  gave  her  something  to  think  about,  George." 

He  strode  fiercely  across  the  lawn  with  his  hands  clasped 
Napoleonically  behind  his  back. 

"What  did  she  say  ?"  I  asked,  hurrying  to  overtake  him. 

"Wouldn't  hear  of  it,  don't  you  know?"  he  answered 
mimickingly.  "We  were  a  pair  of  children,  don't  you  know? 
I'd  behaved  scandalously  in  mentioning  such  a  thing,  it  was 
monstrous ;  what  had  I  got  to  support  her  on  ?  It  was  all 
her  fault  for  ever  letting  Sonia  go  to  Oxford,  young  men  were 
not  to  be  trusted,  and  after  the  years  she'd  known  me,  don't 
you  know?"  He  blew  a  long  breath.  "She  couldn't  have  said 
much  more  if  we'd  eloped." 

"Well,  what's  going  to  happen  now  ?" 

He  flung  his  hands  out  in  wild  gesticulation,  and  his 
black  eyes  were  round  and  hot  with  angry  surprise. 

"She  declined  to  recognize  the  engagement  and  told  me 
I  was  to  consider  it  off,"  he  said.  "I  told  her  I  proposed  to 
marry  Sonia.  'That  is  for  us  to  decide !'  "  He  clutched  my 
arm  and  marched  me  the  length  of  the  lawn.  "George,  she 
getting  damnably  pompous  since  they  made  Dainton  a  bart. 
We  seemed  to  have  reached  a  bit  of  an  impasse.  '/  don't 
recognize  even  an  understanding,'  she  said,  'and  I  shall 
not  permit  Sonia  to  do  so.  If  you  persist  in  this — nonsense, 
my  husband  and  I  shall  have  to  consider  whether  it  is  ad- 
visable for  you  and  Sonia  to  have  any  opportunities  of  meet- 
ing, don't  you  know?  If  you  will  take  my  advice  .  .  .' 
Pah!  And  then  she  handed  it  out.  I  must  think  of  my 
career,  I  was  a  mere  boy;  you  needed  to  be  married  to  ap- 
preciate that  marriage  was  an  expensive  luxury  .  .  ." 

"You  seem  to  have  taken  it  in  the  neck,  Raney,"  I  said  as 
he  choked  and  grew  silent  in  his  disgust. 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  133 

"Pretty  fairly.  I'm  not  to  write.  I'm  honour-bound  not 
to  mention  the  subject  to  Sonia  on  pain  of  having  the  door 
shut  in  my  face  next  time.  'Of  course,  we  shouldn't  like  that. 
You're  an  old  friend.  Perhaps  if  you  had  sisters  of  your  own, 
don't  you  know.  She  started  to  get  patronizing,  George,  so 
I  asked  her  to  tell  me  whether  she  admitted  me  to  the  house 
because  I  was  fit  to  be  admitted,  or  out  of  pity  because  I 

hadn't  a  home  of  my  own  and  was  a  bastard " 

At  the  risk  of  writing  myself  down  old-fashioned  and  con- 
ventional, I  admit  there  are  two  or  three  words  that  send  a 
shiver  through  me. 

"My  dear  Raney  .  .  .!"  I  began. 
He  laid  a  hand  on  my  arm. 

"You  can't  improve  on  what  she  said,  old  man,"  he 
assured  me. 

"Call  a  spade  'a  spade'  by  all  means,"  I  said,  "but  not  'a 
bloody  shovel.'  Especially  with  women.  They  have  to  'pre- 
tend to  be  shocked." 

He  threw  up  his  head  with  a  mirthless  laugh. 
"There  was  devilish  little  pretence  about  Lady  Dainton. 
It  wasn't  a  word  I  ought  to  have  used,  and  apparently  it  wasn't 
a  thing  I  ought  to  have  been.  I  suppose — she  hadn't — heard 
about  it  before."  He  stood  silent  for  many  moments.  "I 
asked  her  whether  my  presence  was  still  acceptable.  Of  course 
she  was  bound  .  .  .  did  it  very  nicely,  all  the  same.  She 
said  I  was  as  welcome  as  before  last  June. 

He  took  out  a  pipe  and  began  filling  it.  I  have  met  few 
men  to  whom  the  trite  metaphor  of  "blowing  off  steam"  was 
so  applicable. 

"Was  that  all?"  I  asked. 

"I  told  her  I  regarded  myself  as  being  still  engaged  to 
Sonia."  His  eyes  suddenly  blazed  and  his  voice  rose.  "And 
that  I'd  marry  her  if  the  whole  world  was  in  our  way.  Chil- 
dren indeed !  Does  she  think  there's  some  fixed  age  for  falling 
in  love?"  Again  he  blew  a  long  breath.  "She  said  she 
couldn't  be  responsible  for  what  I  chose  to  fancy  about  my- 
self, but  that  I  knew  her  views.  There  the  row  ended." 
There  was  a  subdued  leave-taking  that  night,  and  for  some 


i34  SONIA 

days  the  gloom  spread  by  Lady  Dainton  seemed  to  hang  round 
her  house  and  family.  For  all  my  wisdom  and  superiority  in 
discussing  the  rash  engagement  with  Amy  Loring,  I  was  sorry 
to  see  it  broken  off.  Two,  three  years  before  I  had  been  as 
anxious  as  O'Rane  to  marry  and  I  do  not  know  that  a  dis- 
appointment hurts  less  at  eighteen  than  later  in  life.  It  is 
true  that  there  was  no  pecuniary  embarrassment  in  my  case, 
but  at  that  age  I  refused  to  regard  it  as  a  serious  obstacle 
in  O'Rane's  path.  If  anyone  wanted  money,  he  either 
manoeuvred  himself  into  a  job  or  put  his  shoulders  to  the 
wheel  and  made  it.  The  one  course,  I  then  fondly  believed, 
was  as  delightfully  simple  as  the  other.  In  few  words,  Lady 
Dainton  was  entirely  wrong  and  O'Rane  entirely  right. 

I  carried  that  opinion  with  me  to  Cairo  and  beyond.  The 
days  of  our  passage  out  were  days  in  which  Sonia  would  come 
on  deck  in  the  morning  rather  white  of  face  and  waterily 
bright  of  eye.  By  night,  as  we  strolled  aft  and  looked  out 
over  the  creaming  wake,  I  would  try  to  invent  little  consoling 
speeches  and  tell  her  of  men  who  had  amassed  fortunes  almost 
in  an  hour;  and  she — at  sixteen  and  a  half — would  gaze 
across  the  gulf  that  separated  her  from  one-and-twenty.  On 
that  day  she  would  marry  him  if  she  married  beggary  with 
him,  though  beggary  was  but  so  much  rhetoric  on  her  lips. 
O'Rane's  future,  as  they  had  mapped  it  out  together  a  dozen 
times,  included  two  things  that  stood  out  above  the  rest — the 
revival  of  the  title  that  had  died  with  his  father  and  a  fortune 
wherewith  to  restore  his  father's  estate.  From  so  determined 
a  republican  no  less  could  be  expected. 

The  month  I  spent  in  Cairo  made  me  doubtful  whether 
Raney  had  not  met  his  match  in  Lady  Dainton.  Even  con- 
ceding the  practicability  of  her  daughter's  generous  assump- 
tions, I  doubted  whether  fair  time  would  be  granted  for  their 
maturing.  Lady  Dainton's  ambition  carried  her  far  and  fast ; 
she  was  now,  after  five  years'  assiduity,  reckoned  unhesitat- 
ingly as  of  county  family ;  a  like  assiduity  directed  on  London 
would,  in  another  five  years,  leave  no  house  unstormed.  I 
know  no  one  outside  an  Oscar  Wilde  play  who  talked  (so 
persistently  of  the  difference  between  those  who  were  "in 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  135 

Society"  and  the  others  who  were  not.  I  studied  her  method 
— and  was  astonished  by  its  simplicity.  She  engaged  a  good 
suite  at  Shepheard's,  aware  beforehand  of  the  class  of  visitors 
she  was  likely  to  meet  there ;  by  perseverance  and  an  agreeable 
manner  she  succeeded  in  getting  to  know  all  who — in  her  own 
phrase — were  "worth  knowing";  and  with  the  aid  of  an  un- 
deniable flair  for  organization  she  made  up  other  people's 
minds  for  them  and  tirelessly  arranged  expeditions  and  parties. 
(It  was  curiously  like  the  "Pinkerton's  Hebdomadary  Picnics" 
of  "The  Wrecker.")  And  on  her  return  to  England  there 
started  a  paper-chase  of  invitations,  beginning,  "I  hope  you  are 
not  one  of  the  people  who  think  friendships  abroad  should  be 
forgotten  at  home,  like  some  dreadful  indiscretion  .  .  ." 

I  left  Cairo  with  the  feeling  that  Lady  Dainton,  were  her 
circumstances  ever  reduced,  would  always  be  worth  bed,  board 
and  a  retaining-fee  for  a  Lunn  and  Perowne  Pleasure  Cruise. 

I  also  thought  that  David  O'Rane,  undergraduate,  must  cut 
an  insignificant  figure  in  her  dominating  eyes. 

II 

The  world  would  be  appreciably  less  unbearable  if  men 
and  women  could  travel  abroad  without  describing  their  travels 
on  their  return. 

After  the  absence  of  a  year,  in  which  I  made  my  way  from 
London  through  Africa,  India,  Australia  to  South  America  and 
back  again  through  the  States,  Japan,  China  and  Russia,  I  am 
free  to  admit  that  I  sinned  frequently  and  soliloquized  inter- 
minably to  men  who  neither  knew  nor  wished  to  hear  about 
the  countries  I  had  visited.  I  was  very  young  at  the  time, 
and  that  must  be  my  excuse.  Greater  age,  and  my  sufferings 
at  the  hands  of  others,  will  now  restrain  my  pen  and  limit 
me  to  a  single  reminiscence. 

On  my  way  home  in  the  late  summer  of  1904  I  broke  the 
journey  at  Paris  to  stay  with  Johnny  Carstairs,  who  was  now — < 
after  a  truncated  career  at  Oxford — established  as  an  honorary 
attache  at  the  Embassy.  I  never  visit  Paris  without  turning 
into  the  Luxembourg  to  see  what  Whistlers  are  on  view  and 
this  time,  as  I  came  out  into  the  Gardens,  I  saw  Draycott.  He 


i36  SONIA 

looked  shabby  and  unshaven,  but  not  more  so  than  any 
conscientious  English  student  in  the  Quartier  Latin,  and  at  no 
time  since  he  exchanged  the  extreme  of  foppery  for  the  ex- 
treme of  Bohemianism  had  a  frayed  shirt  or  porous  boots 
seemed  valid  reason  in  his  eyes  for  cutting  a  friend. 

"The  reason?"  Carstairs  echoed,  when  we  met  for  de- 
jeuner in  the  Cafe  d'Harcourt.  "I  know  it,  of  course,  but " 

Three  months  of  diplomacy  had  left  Carstairs  responsible 
and  enigmatic. 

"Don't  be  professional,"  I  said. 

"I'm  not  free  to  say,"  he  answered.  "You  may  take  it 
he  left  his  country  for  his  country's  good,  and,  if  he  goes  back, 
click !"  He  made  the  gesture  of  handcuffs  snapping  over  his 
wrists. 

I  made  no  comment.  Since  that  day  I  should  be  sorry  to 
count  up  the  number  of  men  who  have  gambolled  a  longer  or 
shorter  distance  on  Draycott's  road.  They  have  waylaid  me 
at  the  House  or  Club,  sometimes  on  the  quayside  at  Calais — 
threadbare,  furtive  and  spirituous,  even  at  ten  in  the  morning. 
They  have  all  been  offered  the  opening  of  a  lifetime  and  need 
but  twenty  pounds  for  their  outfit ;  and  they  have  all  accepted 
half  a  crown  with  gratitude,  and  most  have  returned  unblush- 
ingly  once  a  week  until  the  day  when  they  were  met  with 
blank  refusal.  Draycott's  case  was  the  first  of  my  experience 
— and  the  most  complete. 

After  four-and-twenty  hours  in  London  I  crossed  to  Ire- 
land and  joined  my  mother  and  sister  in  Kerry.  Our  meet- 
ing was  in  the  nature  of  a  conseille  de  famille,  to  decide  what 
we  were  going  to  do  and  where  we  were  going  to  do  it. 
Health  and  the  habit  of  years  mapped  out  my  mother's  course 
for  her — the  Riviera  for  the  winter,  Italy  for  the  spring  and 
Lake  House,  County  Kerry,  for  the  summer  and  autumn.  It 
was  a  placid  but  tolerable  programme,  and  Beryl,  who  had  left 
school  two  months  before,  adopted  it  eagerly.  My  mother 
then  came  to  the  remaining  and  unanswerable  question : 

"What  about  you,  George  ?" 

As  so  often  with  men  of  weak  initiative,  the  question — 
with  a  little  judicious  delay — was  answered  for  me.  My 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  137 

uncle  and  former  guardian  wrote  from  an  address  in  the  County 
Clare,  inviting  himself  to  come  for  an  indefinite  period  and 
shoot  an  unstated  number  of  snipe  with  me.  My  mother,  who 
secretly  feared  and  openly  resented  Bertrand's  overbearing 
manner  and  restlessly  critical  tongue,  sighed — and  accepted  her 
fate.  He  arrived  grumbling  at  the  eight-mile  drive,  and  in 
the  course  of  ten  days  left  not  one  stone  upon  another.  The 
food,  the  beds,  the  hours,  the  shooting — there  was  nothing 
too  great  or  too  small  for  his  exasperating  notice — Beryl  was 
twice  reduced  to  tears,  and  my  mother  developed  questionable 
headaches  and  a  taste  for  lying  hours  at  a  time  in  her  room. 
At  heart  Bertrand  was  one  of  the  kindest  men  I  have  ever  met, 
but  his  humour  was  of  the  Johnsonian,  sledgehammer  type,  to 
be  met  with  methods  of  equal  brutality  or  treated  with  passive 
indifference.  On  the  whole  I  was  well  treated.  For  one 
thing,  I  seldom  have  the  energy  to  lose  my  temper;  for 
another,  he  had  been  responsible  for  me  during  the  greater  part 
of  my  sentient  life,  so  that,  when  he  poured  scorn  on  English 
public  schools  and  universities,  I  could  point  out  that  I  went  to 
Melton  and  Oxford  at  his  bidding. 

"And  so  now  you've  written  a  book,"  he  growled  one 
night  after  dinner.  "What  d'you  want  to  do  that  for?" 

"Money,"  I  said  "  'No  man  but  a  blockhead  ever  wrote 
except  for  money.' " 

"H'm.    You  won't  make  money  out  of  that  kind  of  book." 

"Then  you've  read  it?"  I  said. 

Bertrand  knocked  the  ash  from  his  cigar  and  thought  out 
a  disparaging  answer. 

"Oh,  I  looked  at  it,"  he  said  vaguely.  "It's  unequal.  Some 
parts  worse  than  others." 

"It  was  written  by  several  people,"  I  explained. 

"Which  part  was  your  handiwork  ?" 

"Which  did  you  think  the  worst  ?"  I  asked  in  turn. 

My  uncle  looked  at  me  suspiciously. 

"You're  not  proud  of  your  precious  babe,"  he  observed. 

"The  opportunity  would  be  too  irresistible  for  you  if  I 
were." 

Then  he  laughed,  and  with  that  laugh  was  born  the  friend- 


138  SONIA 

ship  of  many  years.  It  was  a  pity,  he  felt,  that  a  young  man 
should  bury  himself  in  the  dreariest  house  of  the  dampest 
county  of  the  damnedst  island  in  the  world.  Why  should  I  not 
come  to  London,  see  a  little  of  politics  and  society,  'try  it  on 
the  dog,  so  to  say' — which  by  amplification  meant  testing  the 
principles  of  "Thursday  Essays"  on  a  popular  meeting?  If, 
as  a  good,  catholic  hater,  there  was  one  thing  he  hated  more 
than  another,  it  was  writing  letters :  why  should  I  not  sign  on 
as  his  secretary  ?  Though  untrained,  I  should  learn  much,  and 
anyone  with  enough  superfluous  energy  to  rush  into  print 
could  handle  his  correspondence  before  breakfast. 

"Rather  you  than  me,  George,"  said  my  mother  when  I 
discussed  the  proposal  with  her.  "You  won't  find  it  easy  .  .  ." 
But  I  had  heard  something  of  Bertrand  Oakleigh's  house  in 
Princes  Gardens  and  was  not  unwilling  to  endure  discomfort 
in  establishing  myself  there. 

"I  shall  be  delighted  to  come,  Uncle  Bertrand,"  I  told  him. 

"For  God's  sake,  don't  call  me  'uncle,' "  he  growled.  And 
with  an  afterthought  that  seemed  lacking  in  logic,  "I'm  not 
your  nurse,  you  know." 

So  in  the  autumn  of  1904  I  crossed  from  Ireland,  sublet 
my  rooms  in  King  Street  and  set  myself  to  study  secretarial 
deportment  and  the  ways  and  character  of  Bertrand.  At  this 
time  he  was  within  a  few  months  of  seventy,  massively  built, 
with  massive  forehead,  and,  I  think,  a  massive  brain  behind 
it.  A  wealthy  bachelor,  with  powerful  digestion  and  love  of 
rich  food,  good  wine  and  strong  cigars,  he  entertained  prodi- 
gally and  had  all  the  admiration  of  Regency  days  for  a  credit- 
able trencherman.  (My  father  rather  offended  him  by  dying 
young,  and  he  looked  askance  at  my  shortness  of  sight  and 
weakness  of  heart,  as  though  the  great-nephew  were  about  to 
complete  the  disgrace  initiated  by  the  nephew.)  In  his  boor- 
ishness  and  courtesy,  his  healthy  animalism  and  encyclopaedic 
intellect,  his  hatred  of  society  and  insistence  on  living  in  it,  he 
was  to  me  a  perplexing  bundle  of  anomalies. 

Some  sides  of  his  character — his  disillusionment,  inde- 
pendence and  far-reaching  capacity  for  verbal  hatred — were 
attributable  to  early  struggles  and  later  disappointments.  After 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  139 

leaving  Trinity  College  he  saw  fit  to  quarrel  with  his  father 
and,  spending  his  last  shilling  in  getting  to  London,  he  picked 
up  a  living  from  the  gutters  of  Fleet  Street,  first  as  a  re- 
porter and  then  on  the  editorial  staff  of  a  since-defunct  paper. 
While  still  working  with  one  hand  at  journalism,  he  saved 
enough  money  to  get  called  to  the  Bar  and  collected  a 
rough-and-tumble  practice  from  solicitors  of  the  kind  that 
sooner  or  later  get  struck  off  the  Rolls.  Eventually  he  took 
silk  and  became  respectable,  and  from  the  Bar  to  the  House 
of  Commons  was  a  short  and  well-trodden  road. 

Older  members  will  still  recall  the  Dilke-Chamberlain 
group  below  the  gangway :  Bertrand  turned  to  it  as  a  compass 
needle  swings  to  the  magnetic  north.  In  '80  he  was  too 
young  to  expect  preferment,  but  after  the  split  I  believe  he  was 
sounded  on  the  subject  of  the  Solicitor-Generalship.  With 
characteristic  perversity  he  affronted  Mr.  Gladstone  by  refusing 
"the  indignity  of  knighthood"  and  in  consequence  remained 
for  thirty  years  a  private  member,  the  leader  in  'caves' 
and  critic  of  governments,  a  formidable  opponent  but  a  terrify- 
ing ally,  with  a  mordant  tongue,  a  confounding  knowledge  of 
procedure  and — I  am  afraid — a  love  of  mischief -making  for 
its  own  sake. 

His  hates  were  chiefly  of  interest  to  the  persons  hated 
and  are  far  too  numerous  to  set  out.  It  could  hardly  be  other- 
wise in  the  case  of  a  man  who  seemed  to  acquire  scandal  in- 
tuitively. Knowing  him  as  I  now  do,  I  should  be  reluctant  to 
send  any  boy  of  four-and-twenty  to  live  in  daily  communion 
with  him ;  for  though,  like  all  professional  cynics,  he  came  in 
time  to  be  disregarded,  it  is  of  doubtful  good  for  any  young 
man  to  see  the  world  in  quite  the  condition  of  corruption  in 
which  Bertrand  depicted  it.  Jews  and  Scots,  Tories  and  Non- 
conformists, lawyers  and  humanitarians,  he  hated  them  by 
classes:  within  the  Radical  core  his  antagonism  was  directed 
both  against  the  men  who  lagged  behind  and  those  who  raced 
beyond  the  insular  individualism  by  which  alone  salvation 
could  come.  I  always  felt  that  were  a  guillotine  ever  set  up 
near  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  he  would — by  his  own  stand- 
ards of  justice — be  the  sole  survivor. 


1 40  SONIA 

Hide  the  fireworks  or  disperse  the  spectators,  and  he  was 
another  man.  His  antipathies  were  so  far  from  being  re- 
ciprocated that  Princes  Gardens  was  a  political  Delphi.  His 
judgement  and  knowledge  of  men  were  good  enough  for  Min- 
isters to  consult  him  on  appointments,  chiefly — by  some  curious 
irony — ecclesiastical  preferment,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  he  never  tripped.  I  always  imagine  that  he  stirred  a 
busy  finger  in  the  concoction  of  Honour  Lists,  though  this 
part  of  the  correspondence  he  kept  to  himself. 

Birthday  and  New  Year  Honours,  however,  played  a  small 
part.  Land  Valuation  Leagues  submitted  him  their  propa- 
ganda, Disarmament  Societies  asked  how  far  it  would  be  safe 
to  oppose  a  vote,  and  I  have  known  very  highly  placed  offi- 
cials to  consult  him  on  points  of  party  management.  His  own 
description  of  himself  was  sometimes  "a  party  boss,"  some- 
times "an  extra  Whip"  and  usually  "the  official  unpaid  cor- 
rupter  of  the  Liberal  party."  This  last  phrase  seldom  failed 
to  drop  from  his  lips  at  the  end  of  a  big  political  dinner  when 
he,  after  being  corrupted  by  the  flattery  of  a  Minister,  in  turn 
corrupted  conscientious  objectors  at  the  rate  of  nine  courses 
and  a  bottle  of  Louis  ROederer  per  man. 

I  soon  ceased  to  wonder  at  my  uncle's  objection  to  send- 
ing out  invitations  in  his  own  hand.  For  luncheon  he  kept 
open  house,  and  any  man  might  come  to  seek  or  offer  advice 
and  continue  coming  till  a  more  than  ordinarily  brutal  insult 
convinced  him  that  his  presence  was  no  longer  welcome;  it 
was  at  a  dinner  that  his  formal  entertaining  displayed  itself. 
On  Mondays  we  had  "these  damned  official  Liberals" — can- 
didates and  members ;  ex-Ministers  and  leaders  of  dissentient 
minorities;  ecstatic,  white-hot  Nonconformist  pastors  and 
worried  party  journalists  trying  to  reconcile  the  two-and- 
seventy  jarring  sects  into  which  Liberalism  split  after  the 
Chesterfield  speech.  Bertrand  would  glower  at  them,  indi- 
vidually and  in  bulk,  but,  as  the  shrill,  earnest  voices  rose  and 
mingled,  I  could  see  his  eyes  travelling  from  time-server  to 
intransigeant,  as  though  his  fingers  were  on  the  pulse  of  the 
whole  unwieldy,  centrifugal  party.  And  when  he  had  looked 
longer  than  usual  at  a  man,  he  would  wander  round  the  table 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  141 

and  murmur  casually,  "Stay  behind  for  another  cigar  when 
the  Bulls  of  Bashan  have  gone." 

The  Thursday  dinners  and  the  guests  invited  to  them 
were  marked  in  his  book  with  a  D — which  stood  for  Duty, 
Dull  or  Damnable,  according  to  his  temper. 

"I  have  to  do  it,  George,"  he  explained,  with  a  half  apolo- 
getic headshake.  "For  fifty  years  I've  dined  with  them,  and 
they  must  come  and  dine  with  me.  If  I  refused  to  meet 
'em  .  .  ."  He  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "All  my  time  would 
be  taken  up  inventing  excuses.  Take  my  tip  and  dine  out 
on  Thursdays.  I'll  put  you  up  for  the  Eclectic.  Don't  miss 
Saturday,  though.  The  Saturday  dinners  are  sometimes  quite 
amusing." 

In  ten  years  I  do  not  believe  I  missed  a  single  Saturday 
dinner  and  for  reward  I  think  I  have  met  what  Lady  Dainton 
would  call  "everybody  worth  meeting"  in  Bohemian,  artistic, 
un-Social  London.  Looking  round  the  long  table  at  the 
authors  and  musicians,  the  returned  travellers  and  soldiers  on 
leave  from  a  forgotten  fringe  of  Empire,  I  was  always  remind- 
ed of  a  well-attended  dinner  of  the  Savage  Club.  You  were 
invited — not  for  what  you  were,  but  for  what  you  had  done  or 
because  you  could  talk;  and  Bertrand  in  black  tie  and  short 
jacket  radiated  a  new  urbanity  over  the  gathering.  We  dined 
soon  after  eight  and  sat  talking  into  the  early  morning.  About 
midnight  a  sprinkling  of  actors  and  Sunday  journalists  would 
drop  in  for  sandwiches,  champagne  and  cigars.  If  there  were 
vocalists  or  composers,  the  piano  was  dragged  in  from  the 
morning-room;  I  used  to  hear  a  good  deal  of  poetry  recited 
before  or  in  lieu  of  publication,  and,  whenever  Garden,  the 
"Wicked  World"  cartoonist,  was  with  us,  he  would  sit  with 
one  leg  thrown  across  the  other,  his  cigar  at  an  acute  angle  and 
a  spiral  of  blue  smoke  curling  into  his  eyes,  while  he  covered 
the  backs  of  the  menus  with  caricatures  in  charcoal.  I  have 
a  drawer  full  of  them  somewhere — Trevor-Grenfell  who  pene- 
trated the  Himalayas  by  a  new  pass,  Woodman  as  'Lord 
Arthur'  in  "Eleventh  Hour  Repentance,"  Milhanovitch  at  the 
piano  and  a  dozen  more. 

Failing  professional  talent,  my  uncle  would  be  called  on  to 


SONIA 

make  sport.  The  only  men  I  know  who  eclipsed  him  in  mem- 
ory were  Burgess  and  O'Rane,  and  he  had  lived  so  long  in 
London,  hearing  and  storing  the  gossip  of  every  hour,  that 
it  was  almost  impossible  to  find  him  at  fault.  That  he  was 
a  stimulating  talker,  experimenting  in  talk  and  taking  risks 
in  conversation,  I  judge  from  the  eagerness  of  his  guests  to  get 
him  started,  and — to  put  the  same  test  in  other  words — by 
the  keen  competition  to  secure  invitations  for  a  Saturday  din- 
ner. I  remember  a  Thursday  night  when  Loring  came  and 
wrestled  with  Bertrand  over  the  official  Catholic  attitude 
towards  Modernism.  I  met  him  in  the  street  a  few  weeks 
later,  and  he  begged  me  to  congratulate  him. 

"What's  happened?"  I  asked. 

"You  ought  to  know,"  he  answered.  "It  came  in  your  fist. 
I've  been  asked  for  a  Saturday." 

And  Loring  was  in  small  things  the  least  enthusiastic  of 
men. 

•My  secretarial  duties  took  no  more  than  an  hour  or  two  a 
day,  and  at  the  beginning  of  1905  I  followed  my  uncle's  advice 
and  put  some  of  my  political  formulae  to  practical  test  by 
going  down  three  or  four  times  a  week  to  Wensley  Hall 
Settlement  in  Shadwell.  The  impulse  came  from  Baxter- 
Whittingham,  who  wrote  to  remind  me  of  "our  pleasant  talks 
at  Oxford"  and  to  say  that  not  a  man  could  be  spared  with 
the  working  classes  in  their  present  scandalous  condition  of 
neglect.  Thirty  per  cent  of  my  generation  worked  for  longer 
or  shorter  periods  in  one  or  other  of  the  university  and 
college  missions :  my  seniors,  laid  by  the  heels  in  the  slumming 
epidemic  of  the  eighties  and  nineties,  were  there  before  me, 
and  my  juniors  continued  the  supposedly  good  work  after 
my  defection.  I  therefore  speak  with  misgiving  and  a  sense 
of  personal  unworthiness  in  confessing  that  East  End  mission 
work  left  me  singularly  and  embarrassingly  cold.  From  some 
lukewarmness  of  spirit  I  failed  to  catch  the  enthusiasm  which 
made  my  fellows  dedicate  their  lives  to  the  work  and  allowed 
them  all  to  drop  it  when  a  dawning  practice  or  the  design  of 
matrimony  laid  more  pressing  claim  to  their  leisure.  Bertrand 
indeed,  indulged  a  favourite  form  of  disparagement  as  soon 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  143 

as  I  made  my  intention  known  to  him. 

"I've  been  through  all  that,"  he  told  me.  "It's  all  right; 
you'll  outgrow  it." 

And  I  outgrew  it  in  some  ten  weeks.  Others  have  told 
me  they  made  lasting  and  unique  friendships.  Such  good 
fortune  did  not  come  my  way.  I  doubted,  and  still  doubt, 
the  possibility  of  friendship  between  a  Shadwell  stevedore  and 
the  angular,  repellent  product  of  an  English  public  school  and 
university ;  this  is  not  to  put  one  above  the  other,  but  merely 
to  disbelieve  the  existence  of  a  common  intellectual  cur- 
rency. Further,  I  am  too  self-conscious  to  run  a  Boys'  Club 
or  play  billiards  with  the  men  without  a  sense  of  unreality 
and  a  fear  of  being  thought  patronizing.  I  question  my  own 
moral  and  social  right,  moreover,  to  conduct  raids  into  the 
houses  of  Thames  watermen  and,  if  anyone  seek  to  justify 
such  mission  work  as  I  found  in  progress  at  Wensley  Hall 
on  the  ground  that  it  showed  rich  and  poor  how  the  other 
lived,  it  is  mere  platitude  to  answer  that  the  poor  revealed 
to  me  as  little  of  their  normal  life  as  I  to  them  of  mine. 
Throughout  my  time  in  Shadwell  I  felt  like  a  bogus  curate  at 
an  endless  choir  treat. 

And,  if  in  looking  back  on  it  all  I  do  not  wholly  regret 
the  weeks  I  spent  there,  it  is  because  of  my  consciously  earn- 
est and  religiously  hearty  fellow-workers  in  the  mission  field. 
Chief  of  them  in  1905  was  Baxter-Whittingham,  or  simply 
"Baxter,"  as  he  was  known  to  all  Shadwell  but  myself,  some- 
times scholar  of  Lincoln  and  a  man  ten  years  my  senior,  who 
had  gone  from  Oxford  to  the  East  End  and  never  returned. 
It  was  the  fashion  at  Wensley  Hall  to  regard  Whittingham  as 
a  Latter-Day  Saint  (I  use  the  phrase  in  its  unspecialized  sense, 
without  reference  to  the  school  of  Brigham  Young)  ;  and  I 
am  ready  to  believe  that  in  thirty  per  cent  of  his  character 
Whittingham  was  entirely  saintly.  Admiring  disciples  told  me 
how  he  lived  in  a  single  room  of  a  workman's  cottage  on 
fifteen  shillings  a  week  with  a  supererogatory  fast  thrown  in 
on  any  colourable  pretext.  The  first  thirty  per  cent  of  him 
compassionately  and  whole-heartedly  loved  the  poor.  Another 


144  SONIA 

twenty  per  cent  was  given  up  to  an  emotionalism  bordering  on 
sensuality  in  ritual,  music  and  art. 

And  the  remaining  fifty  per  cent  of  Baxter-Whittingham 
was  pure  arrivisme.  He  had  risen  early  and  cornered  the 
market  in  poverty;  there  was  no  one  to  equal  him  on  East 
End  Housing  Problems,  the  Drink  Question,  Sweating  and 
the  Minimum  Wage.  His  little  "Other  Half  of  London"  and 
"England's  Shame"  created  a  considerable  sensation  and  were 
accepted  without  criticism.  Indeed,  who  was  in  a  position  to 
criticize  the  man  who  knew  Shadwell  and  had  lived  there  ten 
years?  When  the  disciples  prevailed  on  him  to  stand  in  the 
1906  election  his  candidature  aroused  an  interest  that  spread 
far  beyond  the  limits  of  his  division.  And  when  he  was  re- 
turned a  party  was  waiting,  ready  made,  in  the  smoking-room 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  Ministers  might  shake  their  heads 
irritably  over  another  Incorruptible,  but  many  a  private  mem- 
ber felt  easier  in  his  mind  for  the  presence  of  the  hollow- 
cheeked,  thin-lipped  figure  in  the  loose-fitting,  semi-clerical 
clothes,  who  seemed  to  carry  England's  poor  in  one  pocket 
and  England's  conscience  in  another. 

And  then,  and  then  came  Spring,  and,  rose  in  hand, 
My  threadbare  Penitence  a-pieces  tore. 

I  left  Wensley  Hall  at  the  beginning  of  the  1905  Season, 
lured  by  cares  of  the  world  and  the  deceit  fulness  of  riches. 
Early  in  April  I  met  John  Ashwell  at  a  dinner-dance  given 
by  the  Sinclairs:  he  casually  elicited  my  name  and  address, 
satisfied  himself  of  my  bona  fides  and  went  to  work  like 
an  industrious,  dapper,  well-fed  little  mole.  Within  a  week 
strange  cards  arrived  for  me  without  explanation,  within  a 
month  they  had  assumed  the  dimensions  of  a  moderate  snow- 
storm. 

"Who  is  Mr.  John  Ashwell  ?"  I  asked  my  uncle  one  morn- 
ing, throwing  over  a  card  bearing  his  compliments. 

"A  Society  promoter,"  Bertrand  answered.  "D'you  know 
Lady  Ullswater?  Those  two  have  started  a  registry  office 
for  eligible  young  men."  He  handed  back  the  card.  "Your 
name's  on  the  books.  He  sends  lists  of  dancing  men  to 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  145 

struggling  hostesses  at  so  many  guineas  a  dozen.  Lady  Ulls- 
water  brings  girls  out  at  a  hundred  pounds  a  head,  with  an- 
other fifty  pounds  if  there's  a  presentation ;  for  three  hundred 
pounds  and  all  expenses — a  couple  of  thousand  in  all,  say — 
she'll  give  a  ball  at  the  Empire  Hotel.  'Lady  of  Title  willing 
to  chaperone  young  girls  of  good  family.  Introductions.' 
You've,  seen  her  advertisements — every  spring  for  the  last 
fifteen  years.  Ash  well  takes  a  commission  on  any  suitable 
match  he  brings  off  in  a  girl's  first  season.  Don't  cherish  too 
many  illusions  about  London  Society,  George;  anybody  can 
get  there  who's  willing  to  pay.  And  unless  you're  particularly 
anxious  to  be  married  off  to  someone  you  don't  know,  I  should 
advise  you  to  avoid  Ashwell.  A  year  or  two  ago  I  heard  him 
with  my  own  ears  tell  a  woman  that  he'd  got  a  man  he  wanted 
her  daughter  to  meet — heir  to  a  viscounty  and  a  good  deal  of 
money ;  only  an  uncle  in  the  way,  and  he  was  a  bad  life.  Of 
course  if  you  feel  you're  immune,  the  pander  to  plutocracy  is 
as  amusing  to  study  as  anyone  else." 

Bertrand's  description  was  not  of  a  kind  to  send  me  out 
of  my  way  in  search  of  Ashwell,  but  in  the  course  of  nine  years 
I  saw  as  much  of  him  as  I  wanted  to.  Of  an  artificial  society 
he  was,  perhaps,  the  most  artificial  member. 


in 


Failing  to  learn  much  of  working  class  conditions  at  first 
hand,  I  decided  to  reform  them  from  the  distant  security  of 
Westminster. 

It  was  a  few  weeks  after  my  apostasy  from  the  Wensley 
Hall  Settlement  that  I  asked  my  uncle  what  steps  he  advised 
me  to  take  in  order  to  get  myself  elected  to  the  House  of 
Commons.  "Thursday  Essays"  seemed  to  have  committed  me 
to  a  political  career,  and  faithful  reading  of  the  party  press 
had  put  my  mind  in  a  fine  ferment  over  the  immorality  of  the 
Unionist  handling  of  Education,  Licensing  and  Indentured 
Labour.  Moreover,  like  most  of  those  who  had  learned  their 


146  SONIA 

political  economy  from  Mill,  I  was  intellectually  offended  that 
the  dead  heresy  of  Protection  should  be  dragged  from  the 
grave  it  shared  with  Bi-metallism  and  galvanized  into  life. 
And  I  suffered  all  the  fierce  irritation  of  the  impatient  idealist 
at  sight  of  a  lethargic  Government  slumbering  in  office  and 
barring  the  path  of  hurrying  academic  reformers.  I  felt  that 
much  must  be  swept  away  and  much  more  built  up.  I  had 
nailed  on  the  public  doors  my  theses  of  Federation,  Land  Re- 
form, Franchise  Adjustment,  Single-Chamber  Government  and 
the  rest.  The  offer  of  the  Viceroyalty  of  India  would  not 
have  kept  me  from  the  House. 

"Want  to  stand  ?"  Bertrand  echoed.  "My  dear  boy,  you'll 
outgrow  that  phase." 

"But  the  hopeless  chaos !"  I  protested.  "We've  become  an 
Imperial  people,  an  industrial  nation,  and  we're  still  trying  to 
run  with  an  obsolete  machine." 

"And — you — think — you — can — alter — it  ?"  Paper  and  ink 
can  never  reproduce  the  cold  scorn  of  his  voice. 

"I  can  have  a  dam'  good  try,"  I  answered,  with  assurance. 

Bertrand  went  to  his  writing-table  and  scribbled  a  note. 

"Take  this  to  Abingdon  Street,"  he  said,  handing  it  to 
me.  "You'll  find  you're  more  than  welcome  these  hard  times. 
I  should  go  there  on  foot,"  he  added  gloomily — "along  Knights- 
bridge  and  through  the  Park,  where  you  can  see  the  trees  and 
hear  the  birds  singing.  London  has  its  charms  in  the  season, 
George.  And  you're  a  dancing  man,  aren't  you  ?" 

I  admitted  the  charge. 

"You'll  soon  outgrow  that"  he  hastened  to  add,  as  though 
repentant  of  having  found  one  good  thing  in  life.  "Well, 
chacun  a  son  gout.  But  you'd  find,  if  you  came  to  the  Gallery 
once  or  twice  ..." 

"Is  there  any  phase  in  life  I  shan't  outgrow,  Bertrand?" 
I  asked. 

He  selected  a  cigar,  pinched  it,  lit  it  and  blew  a  cloud  of 
smoke. 

"No,"  he  answered  at  length. 

"And  what  happens  at  the  end  of  it  all?" 

"You  die." 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  147 

"Well,  what  keeps  you  going?    What  phase  are  you  in?" 

He  stared  out  of  the  window  at  the  stream  of  hansoms  and 
omnibuses  rolling  in  a  double  line  east  and  west. 

"The  great  spectacle  of  life,"  he  replied,  with  a  wave  of 
the  hand.  "You  see  it  rather  well  from  the  House  or  the  Club. 
That  reminds  me,  I'd  better  put  your  name  down.  Come  and 
lunch  there  to-day,  and  I'll  show  you  the  place.  Yes,  the  great 
movement  of  men.  I'm  not  tired  of  that  yet.  But  you've  got 
ideals,  you're  going  to  do  things,  you  aren't  content  to  sit  and 
watch — and  that's  why  I'm  warning  you  against  the  House. 
There  you'll  only  find  jobs  and  disappointed  men  and  backbiting 
and  a  spirit  of  compromise.  However,  you  wouldn't  believe 
me  though  I  rose  from  the  dead  to  tell  you ;  a  man  has  to  find 
these  things  out  for  himself.  You'd  better  tell  the  Whips  who 
you  are." 

I  walked  down  to  the  Central  Office  reflecting  that  Bertrand, 
to  judge  by  his  tone,  had  perhaps  not  yet  quite  escaped  the 
phase  of  idealism. 

His  forecast  of  my  reception  was  accurate  enough.  There 
were  seats  to  fight  in  borough  and  county,  north  and  south, 
east  and  west.  I  could  have  my  choice,  and  with  a  year-book 
open  on  my  knee  I  made  comparative  tables  of  the  majorities 
against  me.  In  the  course  of  the  interview  there  was  diplo- 
matic skirmishing  on  both  sides  as  the  Central  Office  rec- 
onnoitered  to  find  out  how  much  I  was  prepared  to  put  down, 
and  I  tried  to  ascertain  how  far  the  Party  Funds  would  help 
me.  In  consideration  of  a  sum  I  was  not  willing  to  furnish,  I 
could  have  the  reversion  of  a  safe  seat  in  a  mining  area ;  at  the 
other  end  of  the  scale,  the  Whips  would  pay  all  expenses  if 
I  would  consent  to  break  my  shins  on  the  five  thousand 
Unionist  majority  in  South  St.  Vincent's.  Eventually,  I  un- 
dertook to  pay  my  own  expenses  and  fight  the  Cranborne  di- 
vision of  Wiltshire,  where  there  was  a  hostile  majority  of 
one  thousand  eight  hundred.  Then  I  jumped  into  a  hansom 
and  joined  my  uncle  for  luncheon  at  the  Eclectic  Club. 

"The  charm  of  this  place,"  exclaimed  Bertrand  as  he  led 
me  up  the  great  staircase,  "is  that  once  you're  a  member  you 
can  be  sure  of  meeting  most  of  the  men  you  want  to  and  all 


148  SONIA 

the  ones  you  don't.  It's  not  political,  so  you  find  scallywags 
of  all  types.  That's  why  it's  called  the  Eclectic." 

The  great,  grimy,  eighteenth-century  building — Hamilton's 
finest  work,  I  always  think — is  too  well  known  to  need 
description,  and  anyone  who  has  driven  down  Pall  Mall  or 
up  St.  James's  Street  is  familiar  with  the  line  of  bow-windows 
overlooking  Marlborough  House,  and  the  row  of  choleric 
members  who  stare  disgustedly  at  the  street  on  wet  days 
and  revile  the  English  climate.  Within  a  few  months  I  was 
privileged  to  take  my  place  among  them,  and  Bertrand  spent 
an  industrious  week  introducing  me  to  the  rules,  conventions 
and  personalities  of  the  Club. 

It  was  a  rare  opportunity  for  his  favorite  pastime  of 
drawing  indictments  against  professions.  At  one  end  of  the 
dining-room  he  showed  me  a  disillusioned  close  corporation 
of  invertebrate  Civil  Servants,  counting  the  days  till  they 
could  abandon  their  judicious  sterility  and  retire  on  a  pension  ; 
at  another,  the  corner  where  members  of  the  Bar  lunched 
hurriedly  and  discussed  appointments.  There  was  an 
embrasure  traditionally  reserved  for  peers  and  invariably 
raided  by  shy  new  members,  and  an  elastic  table  by  the 
fireplace  where  parliamentarians  gathered  to  refight  the  bat- 
tles of  the  House.  The  sharp  division  and  mutual  jealousy 
of  the  coteries  reminded  me  strongly  of  Oxford,  and,  as 
election  was  in  the  hands  of  the  whole  Club,  every  ballot  had 
the  gambling  excitement  of  a  snap-division.  If  the  Civil 
Servants  supported  a  candidate  too  warmly,  the  Bar  would 
rally,  blackball  in  hand;  the  parliamentarians,  on  the  other 
hand,  held  that  a  club  was  one  thing  and  an  almshouse  for 
permanent  officials  quite  another.  And  they  voted  in  ac- 
cordance with  this  reasoned  conviction. 

The  ideal  candidate  was,  of  course,  the  unknown  man 
with  the  unplaced  backers;  he  might,  indeed,  be  attacked 
on  the  rustic  principle  that  the  function  of  strangers  is  to 
have  half-bricks  heaved  at  them;  or  he  might  creep  in  un- 
scathed, to  the  lasting  mortification  of  men  who  would  after- 
wards have  liked  to  blackball  him.  Not  once  or  twice  have 
I  heard  the  question,  "How  did  he  get  in?  I  suppose  I 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  149 

didn't  know  about  him  at  the  time,  or  I'd  have  pilled  him  like 
a  shot." 

"Is  Adolf  Erckmann  a  member?"  I  asked  my  uncle  in 
a  surprised  whisper  as  we  came  upon  a  stumpy,  bearded, 
scarlet- faced  man  breathing  stertorously  through  thick  lips 
and  resting  on  the  end  of  a  sofa  the  reddest  and  most  naked 
head  it  has  ever  been  my  fate  to  see. 

'   "I  don't  think  any  Club  is  really  complete  without  him," 
was  Bertrand's  guarded  answer.    "He  represents  so  much." 

In  the  last  ten  years  Erckmann  has  come  to  represent  con- 
siderably more  than  in  1905:  his  social  development  in  those 
days  had  hardly  begun,  and  outside  the  City  his  name  was 
still  comparatively  unfamiliar.  There,  if  you  were  a  banker, 
you  knew  Erckmann  Brothers  of  Frankfort,  London  and  New 
York;  in  the  Rubber  Market  you  met  Erckmann  Irmaos  of 
Para;  and  if  you  touched  the  South  American  chemical  trade, 
it  was  long  odds  you  bought  from  Erckmann  Hermanos  of 
Valparaiso.  Moreover,  it  was  difficult  to  deal  in  English 
real  estate,  South  African  diamonds,  Norwegian  timber  or 
Alaskan  furs  without  rubbing  shoulders  with  Erckmann  or 
the  retinue  of  younger  sons  who  picked  up  the  tips  and 
aspirates  he  let  fall  and  in  return  allowed  themselves  to  be 
seen  dining  with  him  or  .yawning  through  the  exquisite 
musical  parties  he  gave  in  Westbourne  Terrace. 

With  his  ceaseless  activity  and  Midas  touch  he  must  have 
been  worth  a  cool  million  even  in  1905  when  he  was  no  more 
than  forty  and  had  been  divorced  but  once.  His  wealth 
thereafter  increased  by  geometrical  progression,  and  slacken- 
ing his  attendance  on  business  he  turned  his  talents  to  society. 
The  knighthood  came  in  the  Coronation  Honours  of  1911, 
the  baronetcy  two  years  later.  There  he  stuck,  for  the  second 
divorce  brought  him  more  notoriety  than  credit:  the  freeborn 
electors  of  Grindlesham,  perhaps  through  inability  to  under- 
stand his  speech,  accepted  his  largess  but  rejected  his  candi- 
dature— twice  in  1910  and  once  in  the  by-election  of  1913 ;  and 
just  when  the  opening  of  the  Cripples'  Institute  brought  his 
name  high  again  in  the  list  of  Government  creditors  the  war 
broke  out,  and  Sir  Adolf — with  all  his  raffish,  lesser  theatri- 


150  SONIA 

cal  entourage — stumbled  helplessly  backward  into  his  social 
underworld.  He  will,  of  course,  re-emerge  after  the  war,  for 
his  type  is  old  as  Ninevah  or  Tyre:  Petronius  wrote  of  the 
feast  he  gave  under  Nero,  and  Alcibiades  probably  dined  with 
him  before  mutilating  the  Hermae. 

For  want  of  a  better  landmark,  Loring  used  sometimes 
to  refer  to  our  early  years  in  London  as  "the  days  before 
one  met  Erckmann,"  and  anyone  who  saw  how  he  and  his 
rowdy  little  circle  dominated  such  houses  as  they  entered 
will  be  grateful  for  the  definition. 

The  summer  of  1905,  my  first  season,  was  undisturbed  by 
him,  though  for  two  and  a  half  months  I  danced,  on  an 
average,  in  eight  houses  a  week.  It  may  be  that  the  future 
will  find  us  too  sober  and  too  poor  to  revive  the  glories  and 
excesses  of  those  days,  and  in  that  case  I  am  glad  I  grasped 
my  opportunities  while  they  lay  within  reach.  As  Bertrand 
predicted,  I  was  to  outgrow  the  phase,  but,  ere  disillusion 
came  with  weariness,  the  life  of  those  summer  months  was 
a  long,  unbroken  dream.  Now  the  men  are  mostly  dead, 
the  women  widowed :  the  great  houses  are  closed,  the  orches- 
tras disbanded  and  bankrupt. 

Yet  for  a  moment  at  a  time  they  still  live.  A  hansom 
once  more  jingles  through  some  Square  to  a  striped  awning 
and  length  of  red  carpet.  Throwing  the  door  open,  Loring 
and  I  descend  with  our  coats  over  our  arms,  press  through 
the  throng  of  interested  idlers,  give  up  our  hats,  pocket  a 
ticket,  pull  on  our  gloves  and  warily  squeeze  our  way  past 
the  couples  on  the  stairs.  I  have  forgotten  half  their  names, 
but  the  faces  are  still  familiar,  and  the  little  jargon  of  the 
ball-room  shouted  from  the  door  to  the  whirling  dancers. 
"Ypu  free  any  time?  Missing  two?  Right!  Many  thanks. 
I  suppose  you're  booked  for  supper?  Well,  sup  with  me — 
early  and  often."  An  odd  bar  of  a  forgotten  waltz  is 
enough  to  call  the  whole  scene  into  life — the  blues  and  whites 
and  pinks  of  the  dresses,  the  line  of  prim,  weary  chaperons 
round  the  walls,  the  lazy,  stereotyped  chatter,  the  drowsy 
scent  of  flowers,  and  the  wonderful  size  and  softness  of  the 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  151 

girls'  tired  eyes  as  daylight  broke  coldly  into  the  yellow, 
stifling  rooms. 

There  was  a  happy-go-lucky  cameraderie  about  it  all.  An 
invitation  once  accepted  left  you  a  marked  man.  "Are  you 
going  to  the  Quentins'  on  Friday?  Well,  come  with  us! 
We've  got  one  or  two  people  dining  first.  .  .  .  Eight-thirty. 
I  don't  know  whether  you  got  my  name.  .  .  .  Oh,  that  was 
rather  clever  of  you!  I  never  listen  myself.  You'll  find 
the  address  in  the  Red  Book,  and  I'll  push  you  along  and 
introduce  you  to  mother  when  she  comes  up  from  supper. 
Have  you  been  selected  for  the  Fortescues'  next  week?  Then 
we  shall  meet  there.  .  .  ." 

And  so  from  April  to  May,  from  May  to  June.  I  could 
stand  late  hours  and  ball  champagne  in  those  days,  the 
whole  of  my  world  was  treading  the  same  round,  and  at 
twenty- four  it  was  the  rarest  fun  imaginable.  Ten  years 
later  finds  the  ardour  damped,  but  I  should  like  to  hear  "The 
Choristers"  played  once  more,  I  should  like  to  dance  again 
with  Amy  Loring,  to  see  her  brushing  back  the  dark  curl  that 
always  broke  loose  over  her  forehead,  to  talk  again  our 
tremendous  trivialities.  And  I  would  give  much  to  hear — say 
— Lady  Pebbleridge's  butler  thundering  out  the  names  at 
Carteret  Lodge — and  to  see  the  men  stepping  forward  in 
response.  .  .  . 

It  was  at  the  Pebbleridges'  ball  that  I  met  the  Daintons 
again.  The  house  was  small  and  the  crowd  was  large.  I 
had  half  decided  to  go  on  to  the  Marlores'  in  hopes  of  finding 
more  room  there  when  I  discovered  Lady  Dainton  and  Sonia, 
pressed  into  a  corner  and  pretending  to  enjoy  themselves. 
Lady  Pebbleridge  had  invited  them  as  she  invited  all  her 
Hampshire  neighbours,  but  they  were  still  strangers  to  London 
and  knew  no  one.  I  acquired  merit  by  finding  the  girl  some 
partners,  giving  Lady  Dainton  an  early  supper  and,  when 
the  room  cleared,  dancing  with  Sonia  and  trying  to  remove 
the  bad  impression  which  her  first  London  ball  had  left  on 
her.  She  had  come  on  from  the  second  Court  and  was  looking 
far  too  attractive  to  be  left  standing  in  a  corner;  moreover, 
ever  since  our  passage  to  Egypt  the  winter  before,  I  had 


1 52  SONIA 

enlisted  under  her  colours  against  her  mother  and  felt  it 
incumbent  on  me  to  provide  such  consolation  as  lay  in  my 
power. 

Beyond  the  statement  that  she  had  not  seen  nor  heard 
from  O'Rane  in  eighteen  months,  I  gleaned  little  information 
in  the  course  of  my  second  supper  on  the  subject  of  her 
chequered  romance.  At  third-hand  she  learned  that  Raney's 
vacations  were  spent  in  studying  English  Industrial  con- 
ditions; he  had  put  in  time  as  an  unskilled  worker  on  the 
Clyde,  as  an  extra  harvest-hand  in  Wiltshire,  and  finally — • 
though  I  never  learned  in  what  capacity — as  a  miner  in  thej 
coal-fields  of  Nottinghamshire.  What  his  purpose  was, 
neither  Sonia  nor  I  pretended  to  guess;  I  judged  from  her 
tone  that -she  was  aggrieved  at  his  experimenting  in  manual 
labour  when  by  merely  expressing  the  desire  he  could  have 
secured  an  invitation  to  Crowley  Court. 

"Does  your  mother  ..."  I  began  tentatively. 

Sonia  shrugged  her  pretty,  white  shoulders. 

"She  says  he  can  come  and  stay  with  us  if  he  wants  to," 
she  told  me.  "It  looks  as  if  he  doesn't  want  to." 

"I'm  fairly  sure  that's  not  the  reason,"  I  said.  "But 
he's  a  wild,  eccentric  creature — as  you'll  find  when  you're 
married  to  him." 

Sonia  drew  on  her  gloves  and  picked  up  her  fan. 

"If  I  ever  am,"  she  said  despondently. 

I  lit  a  cigarette  and  adopted  a  sage,  mature  tone. 

"As  soon  as  you  two  have  got  anything  to  marry 
on,"  I  assured  her,  "your  people  will  recognize  the  engage- 
ment." 

"We're  not  even  engaged  any  more.  Mother  told  him 
...  As  if  I  were  a  child !"  She  broke  off,  pushed  her  chair 
back  and  began  to  walk  towards  the  door  of  the  supper-room. 

"Go  on,"  I  said  as  I  followed  her. 

"Mother  told  him  he'd — he'd  behaved  improperly  in  put- 
ting such  ideas  into  my  head.  Putting  such  ideas!  Mother 
won't  see  I've  grown  up.  And  then  David  got  very  angry  and 
told  her  I  might  consider  myself  free  of  the  engagement  or 
not,  just  as  I  pleased.  And  he  would  never  mention  the 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  153 

subject  till  I  did.  George,  I'm  thoroughly  depressed  and,  if 
I  talk  to  you  any  longer,  I  shall  say  undutiful  things." 

A  few  weeks  later  I  prevailed  on  Bertrand  to  invite  the 
Daintons  to  dinner.  He  had  met  Lady  Dainton  on  the  Com- 
mittee of  the  War  Fund — an  organization  for  the  benefit  of 
men  permanently  injured  in  the  Transvaal ;  he  had  also  taken 
an  active  dislike  to  her  as  he  did  to  all  bustling,  capable 
women.  She  had  joined  the  Committee  one  day  and  cap- 
tured it  the  next.  The  meetings  were  held  at  the  house  which 
Sir  Roger  had  taken  for  the  season  in  Rutland  Gate,  and  with- 
in a  week  there  was  an  imposing  programme  of  concerts, 
bazaars  and  charity  performances.  It  is  bare  justice  to  Lady 
Dainton,  who  initiated  and  controlled  the  organization  in  its 
smallest  detail,  to  say  that  the  revenue  of  the  Fund  doubled 
in  the  six  months  following  her  accession  to  the  Committee. 
I  am  not  sure,  however,  that  this  was  any  recommendation  in 
my  uncle's  eyes. 

"He's  a  bore,  and  she's  a  snob,"  he  declared.  "Don't  we 
know  enough  such  without  gratuitously  adding  to  the  num- 
ber?" 

"I  am  asking  solely  on  the  girl's  account,"  I  said. 

"My  dear  George !" 

The  unaffected  mistrust  of  his  expression  set  me  laughing. 

"You  needn't  be  anxious,"  I  told  him.  "They're  new- 
comers to  London " 

"And  want  to  nobble  the  place!"  he  growled.  "I  know 
the  type,  George.  Climbing,  climbing  .  .  .  They're  beer,  aren't 
they.  I  dislike  brewers." 

"I  don't  suppose  they'll  ask  you  to  buy  any." 

"More  honest  of  them  if  they  did.  A  brewer's  bad,  but  a 
brewer  who's  ashamed  of  his  brewing  .  .  ." 

"Are  you  going  to  invite  them  or  are  you  not?"  I  inter- 
rupted. 

Bertrand  sighed  like  a  furnace. 

"Make  it  one  of  our  Dull  Evenings,"  he  begged  resignedly. 
"Really  dull ;  wipe  off  all  old  scores.  You  can  ask  Ashwell, 
and  Lady  Ullswater,  she'll  be  very  helpful  to  them,  and — oh,  I'll 


154  SONIA 

leave  it  in  your  hands.  Give  me  somebody  tolerable  on  either 
side." 

The  dinner  took  place  some  weeks  later  in  the  early  part  of 
May  and  for  a  Thursday,  and  a  designedly  Dull  Evening, 
was  quite  bearable.  I  took  in  Sonia  and  had  Sally  Farwell 
on  my  left;  her  mother,  Lady  Marlyn,  went  in  with  my  uncle. 
I  have  forgotten  how  the  others  sorted  themselves  out,  but 
conversation  was  maintained  at  an  even  flow,  and  no  one 
seemed  in  an  undue  hurry  to  leave.  And  to  Bertrand  or  any 
one  trained  by  him  to  look  dispassionately  on  at  "the  great 
movement  of  life,"  there  was  a  quarter  scene  from  the  Human 
Comedy  being  played  round  his  own  table.  The  actors 
steadied  to  their  pose  as  the  butler  cried  their  names.  I 
observed  that  the  Daintons  had  wasted  no  time  since  we  met 
at  Carteret  Lodge:  they  were  biases  and  overdriven  with  the 
wearing  life  of  Society. 

"I've  said  I'd  give  a  ball,"  sighed  Lady  Dainton. 
"Really  .  .  .  dreadful  fatigue,  don't  you  know?" 

And  Lady  Ullswater  sidled  up,  shaking  her  wonderful  head 
of  perennially  chestnut  hair. 

"Not  if  you  go  the  right  way  about  it,  dear  Lady  Dainton. 
Of  course,  it's  rather  presumptuous  of  me  to  advise  you, 
but  ..." 

And  in  front  of  me,  through  me  and  over  my  head  at 
dinner,  Sonia  and  Sally  Farwell  bandied  impressive  names. 
With  both  of  them  it  was  the  first  Season,  and  each  seemed 
to  aim  at  showing  the  other — and  me — the  important  figure 
she  had  succeeded  in  cutting.  Sir  Roger,  always  shy  and 
more  than  ever  out  of  his  element,  postured  as  the  bluff  Tory 
Squire  who  hated  London  and  all  its  works.  John  Ashwell, 
who  was  the  son  of  a  highly  respected  North-country  solicitor 
before  he  took  to  peddling  names  of  eligible  bachelors,  shook 
his  head  over  the  plebeian  admixture  of  society,  illustrated  by 
an  account  of  that  day's  luncheon  with  the  dowager  Duchess 
of  Flint.  Even  poor  Lady  Marlyn,  who  was  stone-deaf, 
caught  the  infection  of  play-acting  and  pretended  to  hear  and 
appreciate  the  dialect  stories  of  the  American  attache  on  her 
right. 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  15-5 

I  sometimes  think  life  would  be  simpler  and^more  sincere 
if  we  had  an  official  "Who's  Who"  with  our  incomes,  their 
source,  our  professions  or  public  positions,  our  parents  and 
other  relatives,  not  excluding  those  who  lived  abroad,  with 
the  reason  for  their  retirement.  My  uncle  himself,  who  told 
the  story  of  his  proffered  knighthood  a  thought  too  freely, 
would  have  been  called  the  son  of  a  middle-class  farmer — 
but  for  the  fact  that  Ireland  boasts  no  middle  class.  My 
own  estate  owed  its  existence  to  the  old  penal  laws  against 
Catholics :  less  polished  generations  used  to  say  it  was  ac- 
quired by  apostasy  from  God  and  theft  of  a  brother's  birth- 
right. I  do  not  dispute  the  charge  and  am  gradually  restoring 
the  stolen  property  in  exchange  for  adequate  compensation 
under  the  latest  Land  Purchase  Scheme.  If  the  facts  were 
recorded  in  a  form  accessible  to  the  public,  there  would  have 
been  added  piquancy  attaching  to  my  "Justice  for  Ireland" 
speeches  a  few  months  later.  But  the  mystery,  romance  and 
make-believe  of  social  intercourse  would  have  departed.  And 
our  one  public  virtue  would  drop  out  of  play,  for  we  should  no 
longer  indulge  the  kindliness  of  respecting  our  neighbours' 
susceptibilities. 

As  it  was  I  had  the  ill-luck  to  offend  Sonia.  Despite  the 
weariness  she  inspired  in  me  with  what  the  republican  O'Rane 
would  have  called  "upper-ten-shop,"  it  was  unintentional.  I 
have  always  kept  up  a  curiously  frank,  rather  cynical  and  en- 
tirely honour-among-thieves  friendship  with  her:  we  know 
each  other  to  the  marrow,  and,  while  in  ignorance  of  any 
quality  other  than  common  egotism  that  should  attract  any- 
one of  her  temperament  to  anyone  of  mine,  I  have  never 
ceased  to  admire  her  on  purely  physical  grounds.  I  am  still 
content  to  sit  as  I  sat  beside  her  that  evening,  gazing  at  the 
heavy  coils  of  her  brown  hair,  the  red,  moist  lips,  the  brown, 
rather  wistful  eyes  and  the  singularly  beautiful  arms  and 
shoulders  gleaming  white  through  the  transparency  of  her 
sleeves.  I  can  understand  any  man  falling  in  love  with  her; 
I  can  understand  any  man  wanting  to  live  his  whole  life  with 
her — for  a  month. 

Offence  came  by  Tony   Crabtree.     Ascertaining  that  I 


156  SON1A 

knew  him,  she  invited  my  opinion,  and  with  the  sense  of 
stumbling  unexpectedly  on  a  too  rare  opportunity,  I  told  her 
all  that  I  knew  and  much  that  I  thought. 

"He's  a  great  friend  of  ours,"  she  cut  in  disconcertingly 
when  I  paused  for  breath. 

"He's  a  bad  man,  Sonia,"  I  repeated. 

"He's  the  best  fun  out,"  she  insisted;  "you  don't  know 
him." 

"You  know  him  well?" 

"He  dines  with  us  about  once  a  week;  he's  taking  an 
awful  lot  of  trouble  over  our  ball.  I  wanted  you  to  dine  and 
meet  him." 

"I'll  dine  with  pleasure " 

"I  shall  ask  him  too.  He's  always  inquiring  after  you.  I 
thought  you  were  rather  friends  at  Oxford." 

"We  never  exchanged  an  angry  word,"  I  said.  "I  don't 
like  him  all  the  same,  though." 

Yet,  when  I  dined  in  Rutland  Gate  the  following  week, 
Crabtree  was  there.  The  household  indeed  revolved  round 
him,  and  the  majesty  of  Lady  Dainton  was  subjugated  by  the 
majesty  of  Crabtree.  I  was  to  meet  him  on  and  off  for  the 
next  ten  years :  on  one  or  two  occasions  there  was  unwelcome 
intimacy  in  our  relations,  and,  though  we  have  now  drifted 
apart,  I  still  see  and  wonder  at  his  faculty  of  success.  At 
Oxford  he  was  primarily  the  man  who  cadged  invitations,  di- 
rected other  people's  parties  and  exploited  a  heartiness  of 
manner  and  a  certain  social  position  in  the  university  for 
what  they  were  worth  in  cash  or  its  equivalents.  "A  man 
always  and  everywhere  on  the  make,"  was  Loring's  definition 
after  meeting  him  on  the  Bullingdon.  As  a  log-roller  and 
picker-up  of  unconsidered  meals,  he  had  no  equal,  and  his 
activity  was  characterized  by  the  most  frugal  spirit.  Though 
he  dined  with  us  three  or  four  times,  we  never  entered  his 
rooms  in  Magdalen  or  Long  Wall,  and  his  mode  of  life  was 
to  live  on  a  social  aspirant  for  eight  weeks  and  then  propose 
the  spoiled  Egyptian  for  membership  of  the  Club.  The  follow- 
ing term  saw  him  billeted  on  a  new  victim.  It  was  an  arrange- 
ment that  suited  all  parties  save,  perhaps,  the  Bullingdon. 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  157 

I  fancy  he  had  considerably  outlived  his  popularity  by  the 
time  he  went  down,  and  in  anyone  else's  hands  the  system 
would  have  gone  to  pieces  in  a  year.  My  excuse  for  this  di- 
gression must  be  a  desire  to  emphasize  the  sufficiency  of  his 
brazenness  and  empressement  of  manner  to  put  his  critics 
out  of  countenance.  I  can  see  him  now,  with  his  big  loose- 
limbed  frame,  his  smooth  face,  and  black  hair  carefully  part- 
ed in  the  middle — dining  at  someone  else's  expense  and  con- 
stituting himself  the  life  and  soul  of  the  party.  In  tearing 
spirits,  yet  never  losing  control  of  himself;  drinking  freely, 
but  never  drunk;  open,  but  never  candid;  careless,  but  never 
off  his  guard — he  was  a  disconcertingly  cold  and  calculating 
man,  clever  and  technically  honest,  though  I  would  trust  him 
no  further  than  I  could  see  him.  After  coming  down  he  went 
to  the  Bar  and  pushed  his  way  into  a  fair  practice;  several 
years  later  he  married  a  widow  rather  older  than  himself,  and, 
as  his  first  public  act  was  to  appear  as  Conservative  candi- 
date in  one  of  the  Glasgow  divisions,  I  infer  that  his  wife  had 
money.  Immediately  after  the  outbreak  of  war  I  found  him 
hurrying  through  the  Horse  Guards  in  a  staff  captain's  uni- 
form. Though  doubtful  of  his  ability  to  "tell  at  sight  a 
chassepot  rifle  from  a  javelin,"  I  was  in  no  way  surprised. 

His  career  is  still  young,  and  he  has  hardly  aged  at  all 
since  the  night  when  I  met  him  at  dinner  in  Rutland  Gate. 
I  have  no  idea  how  long  he  had  been  known  to  the  family, 
but  it  was  pretty  to  see  him  slap  Sir  Roger  on  the  back,  to 
hear  him  call  Sonia  by  her  Christian  name  or  address  his  host 
as  "Dainton."  He  was  prolific  of  suggestions  for  the  forth- 
coming ball,  drawn  largely  from  experience  of  what  was  done 
by  "my  cousin  Lord  Beaumorris"  at  some  period,  I  imagine, 
before  that  nobleman's  second  and  latest  bankruptcy. 

By  the  end  of  the  evening  my  dislike  of  him  was  no  less, 
but  it  was  diluted  with  a  certain  envious  admiration. 

IV 

Social  amenities  make  a  petty  thing  of  life,  and  from  the 
loftiness  of  a  time  when  our  souls  are  supposed  to  be  enlarged 


158  SONIA 

by  war  I  look  back  to  find  an  infinite  littleness  in  the  artificial 
round  we  trod  during  my  idle  early  days  in  London.  My 
uncle,  who  was  ashamed  of  betraying  enthusiam,  took  mis- 
chievous delight  in  employing  a  low  scale  of  values,  and  at 
five-and-twenty  I  fancied  that  to  be  cynical  was  to  be  mature. 
I  trace  a  curious  inability  to  distinguish  the  essentials  of  ex- 
istence, and  had  anyone  used  such  a  phrase  at  that  time  I  am 
sure  I  should  have  demanded  rhetorically,  "What  are  the 
essentials  ?" 

Thus,  Lady  Dainton's  first  ball  for  Sonia  was  of  little 
enough  moment  for  men  associated  TOO  e5  IA\  Ivexa.  and,  in 
my  eyes,  the  greatest  of  its  many  surprises  was  that  I  induced 
Bertrand  to  accompany  me  and  stay  out  of  his  bed  till  after 
four.  There  was  no  merit  in  my  own  attendance.  Sonia 
invited  me  verbally,  her  mother  by  means  of  a  card  eight 
inches  by  six ;  a  week  before  the  night  panic  descended  on  the 
family;  they  requisitioned  their  friends'  lists,  and  I  received 
three  more  cards  with  three  sets  of  compliments,  while  on  the 
day  itself  I  was  told  by  telephone  that  if  I  knew  of  one  or  two 
additional  men  I  was  to  bring  them  punctually.  So  Bertrand, 
whose  study  of  the  great  movement  of  men  had  never  led 
him  within  the  Empire  Hotel,  found  himself  incontinently 
deprived  of  his  second  cigar  and  packed  into  a  cab  on  the 
stroke  of  ten-fifteen. 

From  the  moment  of  our  arrival  I  could  prophesy  success. 
Lady  Dainton,  I  know,  secured  anticipatory  and  retaliatory 
invitations  for  Sonia ;  Lady  Ullswater,  who  helped  her  to  re- 
ceive, reckoned  up  numbers  and  all  they  represented  in  her 
obscure  finances;  Ashwell  wandered  through  the  long  rooms 
with  an  air  of  modest  proprietorship,  telling  marchionesses 
of  the  balls  he  had  left  and  duchesses  of  the  balls  he  was 
going  to.  All  the  men  obtained  food,  several  of  the  girls  ob- 
tained partners ;  and  Dainton,  who  appeared  five  several 
persevering  times  in  the  supper-room,  had  the  gratification  of 
meeting  at  least  one  appreciative  guest  who  observed,  in  the 
intervals  of  filling  a  capacious  cigarette-case,  "Dunno  the 
merchant  who's  runnin'  the  show,  but  he  does  you  pretty  well, 
what?" 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  159 

At  ten-thirty  the  ball's  fate  lay  still  on  the  knees  of  the 
gods,  but  by  eleven  the  rush  had  set  in.  I  could  see  Sonia's 
face  brightening,  her  eyes  lighting  up  like  the  eyes  of  a  polit- 
ical agent  as  he  shepherds  his  stalwarts  to  the  poll.  Tall  and 
short,  dark  and  fair,  stout  and  lean,  they  surged  foward  in  an 
endless  black  and  white  stream,  as  desirable  a  set  of  young 
men  as  the  combined  talents  of  Ashwell  and  Lady  Ullswater 
could  bring  together. 

"She's  launched!"  said  Bertrand,  after  an  hour  of  the 
scene,  and  we  walked  upstairs  in  search  of  a  cigar.  By  the 
buffet  we  found  Dainton  standing  alone  and  drinking  a  sur- 
reptitious glass  of  champagne. 

"Who  does  he  remind  you  of?"  my  uncle  asked  me  as  we 
gained  the  lounge,  and  when  I  hesitated — "Don't  you  remem- 
ber your  Du  Maurier?" 

And  then,  of  course,  there  leapt  before  my  eyes  the  picture 
of  Mrs.  Ponsonby  de  Tomkyns's  husband  at  one  of  Mrs. 
Ponsonby  de  Tomkyns's  parties:  a  jaded  but  unprotesting 
figure,  leaning  against  the  wall  and  dully  blinking  at  his  lady's 
social  captures ;  heavy-eyed,  drooping- jawed,  with  bulging 
shirt-front  and  necktie  askew.  One  hand  stifles  a  yawn,  the 
other  guardedly  conceals  the  watch  at  which  he  is  glancing 
with  furtive  resignation.  Mrs.  Ponsonby  de  Tomkyns,  mean- 
while, is  rising  from  triumph  to  social  triumph;  he  is  paying 
the  bill — and  wondering  wherein  lies  the  fascination  of  it  all. 

As  it  was  too  crowded  to  dance  and  too  early  to  sup,  we 
took  a  couple  of  arm-chairs  and  ordered  coffee.  Overheated 
defaulters  joined  us  from  time  to  time,  and  Crabtree  favoured 
us  with  his  presence  long  enough  to  inquire:  (i)  how  much  I 
thought  this  touch  was  costing  the  old  boy,  (ii)  what  he  would 
cut  up  for,  (iii)  what  sort  of  place  Crowley  Court  was,  and 
(iv)  whether  I  thought  "The  Trade"  was  likely  to  buck  up 
at  all. 

"Who  is  your  objectionable  fat  friend?"  Bertrand  asked 
when  we  were  alone  again. 

"Objectionable — yes.  Fat — yes.  But  no  friend,"  I 
answered.  "His  name  is  Crabtree,  and  you  are  the  only  man 
in  London  whom  he  has  not  yet  told  that  he  is  related  to  the 


i6o  SONIA 

intermittently  bankrupt  and  always  disreputable  Lord  Beau- 
morris." 

"And  he's  running  after  this  Dainton  girl?" 

"It's  healthy  exercise,"  I  said,  "and  he  hasn't  run  very  far 
as  yet." 

"Well,  well !"  He  sighed.  "Marriage  is  a  race  in  which 
the  bookmaker  invariably  bolts  with  the  money." 

"What  you  want  is  some  supper,"  I  said. 

"No,  I  want  to  watch  the  people  a  bit  more.  Who's  the 
Greek  god  who  just  went  by?" 

"The  man  who  waved?" 

"Yes.    Face  all  eyes." 

"That  was  David  O'Rane,"  I  said. 

My  uncle  made  me  repeat  the  name  and  then  sat  silently 
smoking  for  fully  ten  minutes.  I  thought  he  was  falling 
asleep,  but  he  suddenly  roused  himself  to  ask: 

"What  O'Rane  is  he?"  and,  when  I  had  given  a  short 
account  of  my  dealings  with  him  for  the  last  seven  years, 
"Why  the  devil  didn't  you  tell  me  you  knew  him  ?" 

"I  never  imagined  you'd  even  heard  of  his  existence,"  I 
answered  in  some  surprise. 

"I  hadn't.  That's  just  it.  George,  I  should  like  to  meet 
the  boy.  No,  no !  Not  now.  When  he's  disengaged.  He'll 
only  think  me  an  old  bore,  but  I'm  curious.  .  .  .  He's  a  very 
beautiful  creature." 

"And  quite  mad,"  I  said.  "If  you  won't  accept  my  kind 
invitation  to  supper,  I  shall  go  down  to  find  someone  who  will." 

An  hour  later,  with  the  consciousness  that  I  had  done 
nothing  to  justify  my  presence  in  the  hotel,  I  sought  out 
Sonia.  A  double  line  of  claimants  was  closing  in  round  one  of 
the  square,  white  pillars  and  towering  over  the  shoulders  of 
the  rest  I  caught  sight  of  Crabtree's  sleek,  black  head.  While 
Sonia  stood  breathless  with  excitement  and  bright-eyed  with 
sheer  joy  of  existence,  he  warded  off  the  crowd  like  a  police- 
man regulating  traffic. 

"Now  then,  Sonia,  what  about  it?"  I  asked. 

"Next  but  five,"  she  called  back,  while  Crabtree  waved  a 
large  hand  and  boomed : 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  1 6 1 

"Move  along  there,  young  feller,  don't  make  a  crowd !" 

"The  next  is  ours,  isn't  it,  Miss  Dainton?"  inquired  a 
decorous  little  voice  from  under  my  elbow. 

"Time  you  were  in  bed,  young  'un,"  Crabtree  retorted 
menacingly. 

O'Rane  wormed  his  way  past  me  and  presented  himself. 
In  a  moment's  hush  I  heard  the  sharp  tap  of  the  leader's 
baton ;  for  the  last  time  Crabtree  roared  his  wearisome 
"Move  along  there,  please,"  and,  as  the  music  began,  Sonia 
glided  out  on  his  arm  into  the  middle  of  the  room,  barely 
turning  to  cry  over  her  shoulder,  "Come  back  later !" 

"My  duty's  done,  Raney,"  I  said.    "Come  upstairs." 

"I  shall  stay  here  a  bit,"  he  answered,  following  Sonia 
round  the  room  with  his  eyes. 

"Please  yourself.  You  can't  smoke  here,  and  there's  some 
old  Green  Chartreuse  upstairs." 

"Damn  Green  Chartreuse!"  he  returned. 

"You  shouldn't  say  that  even  in  joke,"  I  told  him,  as  I 
started  to  elbow  my  way  back  to  my  old  corner. 

Bertrand  I  found  was  at  supper,  and  our  retreat  had  been 
invaded  by  a  score  of  men  who  by  rights  ought  to  have  been 
dancing.  They  were  chiefly  Tom's  gladiatorial  friends  from 
Oriel,  now  scattering  to  various  units  of  the  Army — Penfold 
to  the  17th  Lancers,  Moray  to  the  Irish  Guards  and  Kent  to 
the  Rifle  Brigade.  Of  the  others  I  knew  Prendergast  of 
Melton  and  New  College,  who  was  now  a  clerk  in  the  Foreign 
Office  and  a  purveyor  of  cheap  mystery,  and  we  were  soon 
joined  by  Sinclair  and  Mayhew.  Both  were  combining  busi- 
ness with  pleasure,  for  the  former  was  playing  for  Yorkshire 
against  the  M.  C.  C.  at  Lord's,  and  the  latter  had  hurried 
townwards  to  negotiate  a  position  on  the  staff  of  "The  Wicked 
World"  as  soon  as  his  last  Oxford  term  was  over.  Stragglers 
came  and  went,  but  our  numbers  remained  steady  and  the 
group  was  completed  by  the  arrival  of  Loring. 

"This  will  never  do !"  he  exclaimed.  "Why  aren't  you 
chasing  the  hours  with  flying  feet?  Why  aren't  you  letting 
joy  be  unconfined  and  all  that  sort  of  thing?  Chartreuse?  I 


1 62  SONIA 

can  hardly  believe  it!     Of  course,  if  you  insist.  .  .  .  Sinks, 
go  and  dance !" 

"I've  been  cut,"  Sinclair  returned  contentedly. 

"Faint  heart  never  won  fair  lady.  You  said  Chartreuse, 
didn't  you?  I  like  to  make  quite  sure.  You  been  cut  too, 
George?" 

"We've  all  been  cut,"  I  said. 

Loring  looked  round  and  pointed  an  accusing  finger  at  an 
immaculate,  pale,  fair-haired  youth  with  sensational  waist- 
coat buttons  and  a  white  gardenia.  I  knew  him  by  sight,  as 
the  illustrated  papers  were  always  publishing  his  photographs 
in  country-house  groups,  and  the  reviews  alternated  between 
describing  his  novels  as  "impossibly  brilliant"  and  "brilliantly 
impossible." 

"No  woman  born  of  woman  has  ever  cut  Valentine  Arden," 
he  said. 

"One  had  three  partners,"  Arden  replied  with  dreamy 
detachment.  "One  could  not  do  justice  to  them  all.  'Solomon 
in  all  his  wisdom  .  .  .'  and  they  had  hot  red  faces.  He  re- 
tired into  himself  and  sat  lost  in  contemplation  of  a  smoke-ring 
till  it  wavered  and  burst. 

"You're  a  contemptible  lot,"  said  Loring  with  scorn.  "No 
more  idea  of  duty  .  .  .  oh,  my  Lord !  here's  Raney !  Go  and 
dance,  you  little  beast !" 

"I've  been  cut,"  O'Rane  protested  with  an  air  of  origin- 
ality. "If  you're  so  keen  on  duty  .  .  ."  He  pointed  to  the 
tray  of  liqueur  glasses.  "And  it's  so  fattening.  Go  and  work 
it  off,  Jim." 

Loring  shook  his  head. 

"I'm  going  home.  I  sat  in  that  filthy  House  all  the  after- 
noon, dined  with  my  uncle,  whose  port  would  disgrace  a 
preaching  friar,  let  alone  a  cardinal.  I  then  attended  a  po- 
litical crush,  turned  up  here,  talked  to  my  h«st,  gave  my 
hostess  supper,  had  two  dances  with  my  hostess's  daugh- 
ter .  .  ." 

"You  were  favored,"  O'Rane  observed. 
"I  was  irresistible.     So  would  any  one  have  been  after  so' 
much  1900  Perrier  Jouet.  .  .  .  However,  that's  neither  here 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  163 

nor  there.  I  enjoyed  those  two  dances,  because  I  was  the 
means  of  dislodging  one  Crabtree  and  seeing  him  packed  off 
to  feed  dowagers." 

"There's  some  value  in  a  title  yet,"  I  said.  "I  tried  and 
failed." 

"How  much  of  the  Perrier  Jouet  .  .  .  ?  Half  a  bottle?  No 
man,  not  even  George  Oakleigh,  was  irresistible  on  a  beggarly 
half -bottle.  I  think  I  shall  go  to  bed  now;  you're  dull  dogs; 
I'm  doing  all  the  talking.  Anyone  walk  as  far  as  Curzon 
Street?  Good  night,  everybody." 

His  departure  was  the  signal  for  a  general  break-up,  and 
a  moment  later  O'Rane  and  I  were  alone.  He  was  silent  and 
out  of  humour,  and  I  did  not  need  to  be  told  that  his  efforts 
to  dance  with  Sonia  had  been  fruitless.  I  mentioned  casually 
that  my  uncle  wanted  to  meet  him  and  suggested  he  should, 
dine  with  us  before  going  back  to  Oxford.  This,  he  told  me, 
was  impossible :  he  was  up  to  his  eyes  in  work  and  had  already 
wasted  more  time  than  he  could  afford. 

"Your  Schools  aren't  for  a  year,"  I  pointed  out. 

"No,  but  I  only  work  during  term.  In  the  vac.  I  see 
life." 

I  recalled  what  Sonia  had  told  me  on  the  subject. 

"What's  it  all  for?"  I  asked. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.    "You  must  do  something." 

"Yes,  but — messing  about  at  the  bottom  of  a  mine?  It 
would  be  cleaner  for  you  and  more  amusing  for  me  if  you 
came  and  stayed  with  me  in  Ireland." 

"Or  with  the  Daintons  in  Hampshire.  There's  quite  a 
run  on  me.  Sonia's  frightfully  offended  because  I  haven't 
been  near  Crowley  Court  for  a  year  and  a  half." 

Than  O'Rane  no  man  was  harder  to  convince  that  he  could 
ever  be  in  the  wrong. 

"When  people  are  engaged  ..."  I  began. 

Almost  fiercely  he  cut  me  short. 

"And  the  engagement  laughed  at,  and  you  threatened 
with  the  door  and  blackguarded  for  taking  advantage  of  a  girl's 
youth.  .  .  .  And  your  letters  held  up;  I  was  forgetting  that. 
God !  George,  if  you'd  the  pride  of  a  cur  .  .  .  !"  He  stopped 


1 64  SONIA 

abruptly,  stretched  his  hand  out  for  the  cigarettes  and  lit  one. 
"I  went  to  Dainton,"  he  continued  more  calmly,  "and  asked 
if  he'd  let  me  marry  Sonia  on  a  thousand  a  year — it  was  like 
bargaining  with  a  Persian  Jew  over  the  price  of  a  camel.  He 
wouldn't  commit  himself.  I  told  him  I'd  have  the  money 
two  years  after  coming  down  from  Oxford,  and  he  stroked  his 
fat  cheeks  and  told  me  I  didn't  know  the  difficulties  of  making 
money.  .  .  .  Difficulties!  As  though  Almighty  God  hadn't 
shot  'em  down  all  round  us  so  that  we  shall  have  something 
in  life  to  overcome!  And  that  from  a  man  who  inherited  a 
brewery  and  let  it  down  till  he's  glad  to  sell  it  at  two-thirds  the 
valuation  of  twenty  years  ago !  Yes,  the  Daintons  are  wash- 
ing their  hands  of — commerce.  I  told  him — all  this  was  in 
Sonia's  presence — that  I'd  be  judged  by  my  own  vain  boast- 
ings. I'd  come  up  in  three  years'  time  to  show  him  if  I'd 
made  good,  and  if  she'd  wait  .  .  .  Or  if  she  wouldn't  .  .  . 
I  left  her  a  free  hand.  ..." 

"It  was  only  fair,"  I  put  in. 

"To  me,  yes." 

"To  her." 

"To  me,  George.  There's  not  much  merit  in  being  faithful 
to  a  promise.  But  when  you're  not  bound  in  any  way,  when 
it's  just  a  matter  of  your  own  pride  .  .  .  Sonia  must  show  if 
she  can  make  good  three  years  hence.  If  we  both  come  up 
true — well,  there  you  are." 

He  threw  his  cigarette  away,  yawned,  and  sank  lower  into 
the  chair. 

"When  did  all  this  happen?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  a  year  ago.    More.    It  was  just  after  the  row." 

"Well,  what's  the  trouble  to-night?" 

O'Rane's  eyes,  always  an  interesting  study  in  rapid  emo- 
tion, became  charged  with  sudden  anger. 

"She  thinks  I've  cooled  off  because  I  don't  write,"  he  said. 
"George,  I'm  flesh  and  blood,  I  can't  write — not  letters  that 
Lady  Dainton  would  pass — to  a  girl  I  want  to  be  my  wife." 

"Why  don't  you  go  and  see  her  occasionally  ?"  I  suggested. 

"I've  got  other  work." 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  165 

"I  bet  you  don't  get  fat  on  what  you  earn  carting  hay  in 
Wiltshire." 

"I  don't  do  it  for  the  money.  I  want  to  know  the  lives 
these  fellows  are  leading.  Man's  entitled  to  'Life,  Liberty  and 
the  pursuit  of  Happiness,'  and  there  are  moments  when  I  be- 
gin to  doubt  if  every  man  the  wide  world  over  is  getting  what 
I  claim  he's  entitled  to.  I  didn't  think  /  was  when  I  was  a  kid 
of  fourteen.  I  don't  think  sweated  labourers,  prostitutes,  in- 
curables, children  with  tainted  blood — I  don't  think  they're 
getting  all  they're  entitled  to.  The  average  Armenian,  the 
natives  of  the  Belgian  Congo — I'm  not  easy  in  my  mind  about 
them,  George.  But  before  I  die — my  God !"  He  turned  sud- 
denly as  a  hand  came  to  rest  on  his  shoulder,  and  a  -Voice, 
behind  him  remarked: 

"You're  young  to  be  talking  of  death,  Mr.  O'Rane.-* 

"Let  me  introduce  you  to  my  uncle,  Raney,"  I  said. 

He  sprang  to  attention  with  the  same  click  of  the  heels 
I  had  observed  in  Burgess's  library  some  seven  years  before. 
As  their  hands  met,  Bertrand  searched  the  lean,  animated 
face  and  looked  steadily  into  the  expressive,  defiant  black  eyes. 

"I  understand  you  are  the  late  Lord  O'Rane's  son?" 
Raney  drew  himself  up  to  the  last  inch  of  his  height,  for  all 
the  world  like  a  rock-python  waiting  to  strike.  "Your  father 
was  a  close  personal  friend  of  mine,"  Bertrand  went  on;  "I 
am  very  proud  to  meet  his  son." 

I  set  the  words  down  as  they  were  spoken;  and,  to  read, 
there  is  little  enough  in  them.  Yet,  when  I  heard  them 
uttered,  I  still  recall  that  my  eyes  began  to  smart.  Bertrand's 
manner — half -sneering,  half -openly  brutal — had  taken  on  a 
new  courtliness  towards  a  boy  fifty  years  his  junior.  I  do  not 
regard  myself  as  a  man  of  undue  sensibility:  the  change  of 
tone  was  not  created  by  my  imagination.  O'Rane  lowered  his 
eyes,  bowed  and  murmured : 

"Thank  you,  sir." 

I  have  never  seen  a  quicker  or  completer  conquest. 

Gradually  we  relaxed  our  self -consciousness.  I  brought 
Bertrand  a  chair  and  gave  him  a  cigar  to  smoke. 

"Until  two  hours  ago,"  he  told  O'Rane,  "I  knew  no  more 


1 66  SONIA 

of  your  existence  than,  I  expect,  you  knew  of  mine." 

"Oh,  I'd  heard  a  lot  about  you,  sir,"  Raney  answered. 

"Lies  from  George?" 

"No,  sir.  True  talk  from  my  father.  My  first  term  at 
Melton  I  turned  you  up  in  'Whitaker.'  " 

"The  'London  Directory'  would  have  done  as  well,"  said 
Bertrand. 

"Is  it  too  late  for  me  to  call  ?" 

"By  no  means.    Were  you  too  proud  to  come  before  ?" 

"Too  superstitious,  sir." 

Bertrand  leant  forward  and  laid  his  hand  on  O'Rane's 
knee. 

"George  was  talking  about  you  to-night,"  he  said.  "I 
could  have  offered  a  helping  hand,  perhaps." 

"Perhaps  that  was  what  I  was  afraid  of,  sir." 

My  uncle  looked  at  him  with  amusement. 

"You  are — an  independent  young  man,"  he  said. 

"I  believe  in  Destiny,"  said  O'Rane,  with  an  answering 
smile. 

"What  on  earth  has  that  to  do  with  it?"  asked  Bertrand. 

"I  wasn't  going  to  lie  down  and  die  as  long  as  there  was 
preordained  work  to  do.  Destiny  meant  me  to  win  through." 

"She  didn't  help  you  much,"  I  said. 

"I'm  not  so  sure.  I  dropped  down  once  on  the  sidewalk 
in  Chicago,  and  a  woman  took  me  in  and  nursed  me  round. 
Nursed  me  by  day  and — earned  her  living  by  night.  When 
I  went  to  pay  her  back  and  say  good-bye  before  I  sailed,  she 
was  dead.  Just  two  months  in  all.  And  if  ever  a  woman's 
soul  fluttered  straight  to  heaven " 

"What  are  your  plans  for  the  future?"  Bertrand  inter- 
rupted prosaically.  He,  too,  seemingly  found  O'Rane's  in- 
tensity of  feeling  and  speech  a  little  disconcerting  at  first. 

Raney  woke  suddenly  from  his  reverie. 

"I'm  going  back  to  Oxford  to-morrow,  sir." 

"And  after  to-morrow  ?" 

"I've  got  my  Schools  next  year." 

"I  think  George  said  you'd  taken  one  first.  What  do  you 
expect  in  your  finals?" 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  167 

"Commercially,  there's  no  point  in  an  honour  school  un- 
less you  take  a  first.  After  that,  I  hcve  money  to  make.  After 
that  .  .  ." 

He  broke  off  and  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"It  will  be  Destiny's  turn,"  I  suggested. 

O'Rane  turned  to  me  with  a  good-humored  smile. 

"I  suppose  it's  all  a  wild  welter  of  words  to  you,  George  ?" 
he  asked. 

"No  more  than  any  other  hypothesis  unsupported  by  evi- 
dence," I  said.  "Your  preordained  mission  .  .  ." 

"Isn't  there  one  form  of  work  you  can  do  better  than  all 
others?  Haven't  you  one  supreme  aptitude?  Form  an  alli- 
ance between  aptitude  and  opportunity  .  .  ." 

"And  you  get  a  man  of  Destiny,"  I  said. 

"I  leave  you  the  honour  of  the  phrase." 

Bertrand  glanced  at  his  watch  and  pushed  his  chair  hur- 
riedly back. 

"A  quarter  to  four!"  he  exclaimed.  "I  must  get  home. 
George,  I  want  you  to  arrange  for  David — excuse  me,  it  was 
your  father's  name,  too — for  David  to  come  and  dine  with  us. 
A  Saturday,  of  course.  I  hope  you  will  come,  David.  I'll 
charge  you  for  your  dinner,  if  you  like ;  and  I  think  you  owe 
me  one  evening  after  seven  years." 

"I'll  come  any  time  you  ask  me,  sir." 

"I'll  leave  you  in  George's  hands.  By  the  way,  mysticism 
is  too  fine  and  rare  a  thing  to  rationalize  for  youthful  sceptics. 
You  will  no  more  make  your  creed  intelligible  to  George  than 
you  will  teach  me  to  play  chess  without  a  board.  Good  night, 
my  boy." 

"Good  night,  sir.    I — I  wish  I  hadn't  waited  so  long." 

"Perhaps  it  was  preordained  for  the  strengthening  of  your 
faith,"  my  uncle  answered,  with  a  smile. 

O'Rane  and  I  returned  to  the  ballroom  to  take  leave  of 
Lady  Dainton.  Barely  six  couple's  remained,  and  at  the  end 
of  each  dance  one  or  two  white,  exasperated  mothers  darted 
forward,  whispering  angrily,  "You  must  come  now,  dear." 
Even  Crabtree  had  gone,  and  Sonia  was  breathlessly  battling 
with  her  partner,  Summertown,  to  win  the  even  sovereign  he 


1 68  SONIA 

had  ventured  with  the  leader  of  the  band  on  a  test  of  endur- 
ance. The  band  eventually  won  by  doubling  its  pace,  where- 
upon Summertown  claimed  a  foul  and  stood  in  the  middle 
of  the  room  shouting,  "Ob-jeck-shun !"  till  Roger  Dainton 
silenced  him  with  an  offer  of  bones  and  beer. 

"Good  night,  Sonia,  and  many  thanks,"  I  said.  "It  was  the 
star  turn  of  the  season." 

"Good  night,  Bambina,"  said  O'Rane.  "See  you  again 
some  day." 

"Good  night,  dear  one,"  she  answered  casually ;  and  then, 
with  a  show  of  contrition,  "I'm  sorry  we  didn't  have  that  one 
together." 

"So  am  I,  but  it  can't  be  helped  now." 

"There  were  such  crowds  of  people  I  had  to  dance  with," 
she  explained. 

O'Rane  shook  hands  and  came  away  with  me.  Perhaps 
he  felt,  as  I  did,  that  the  explanation  was  in  the  nature  of  an 
anticlimax. 


During  the  first  half  of  the  1905  Season  I  saw  the  Daintons 
three  times :  after  their  ball  it  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to 
say  we  met  daily.  Our  new  feverish  intimacy  was  not  entirely 
of  my  seeking,  and  I  am  free  to  admit  that  Lady  Dainton's 
capable  energy  left  me  then,  as  it  leaves  me  now,  with  a 
feeling  of  scared  bewilderment,  while  the  measure  of  Sonia's 
success  in  subjugating  London  came  rapidly  to  be  the  measure 
of  my  dislike  for  her.  When,  however,  my  uncle  fell  a  victim 
to  internal  gout  and  departed  for  Marienbad  at  the  end  of 
June,  he  left  me  a  house,  a  box  at  Covent  Garden,  a  voluminous 
correspondence  and  the  financial  welfare  of  the  War  Fund 
to  engage  my  spare  time.  This  last  spelt  Lady  Dainton  and 
afternoon  meetings  in  Rutland  Gate.  I  nerved  myself  to 
face  the  inevitable  and  wire  an  invitation  to  O'Rane  to  stay 
with  me  when  term  was  over. 

He  kept  me  company  till  Goodwood,  and  one  of  our  first 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  169 

acts  was  to  dine  with  the  Daintons.  I  say  it  in  no  ungracious 
spirit,  but  at  this  time  it  was  hardly  possible  not  to  dine 
with  the  Daintons.  Turn  up  the  files  of  the  "Morning  Post" 
and  you  will  read  some  four  or  five  times  a  week  that  a  very 
successful  ball  had  been  given  the  previous  evening  by  Mrs.  X., 
"who  looked  charming  in  an  Empire  gown  of  ivory  silk 
brocade,"  that  among  those  present  were  the  "Duchess  of  This, 
the  Countess  of  That,  Lady  Dainton  and  Miss  Dainton," 
and  that  dinners  were  given  before  the  ball  by  "the  Duchess  of 
Here,  the  Countess  of  There  and  Lady  Dainton."  Lord 
Loring  and  other  well-known  dancing  men  are  reported  to 
have  looked  in  during  the  evening. 

Sometimes  I  feel  my  life  has  been  embittered  by  the 
failure  of  the  "Morning  Post"  to  distinguish  me  by  name; 
not  until  I  entered  the  House  was  I  segregated  from  the  herd 
of  "well-known  dancing  men,"  and  this  was  more  a  compli- 
ment to  the  parliament  of  a  great,  free  people  than  to  myself, 
for  by  that  time  I  had  bidden  almost  complete  farewell  to 
Claridge's  and  the  Ritz,  the  Empire  Hotel  and  those  ill-con- 
structed tombs  in  Grosvenor  Place  that  were  tenanted,  up- 
holstered and  beflowered  for  a  night  between  two  eternities 
of  desolation. 

By  that  time,  too,  the  Daintons  had  scaled  an  eminence 
where  I  could  hardly  hope  to  follow  them.  The  "Tickler" 
and  the  "Catch"  were  never  wearied  of  publishing  full- 
length,  whole-page  photographs  of  "Sir  Roger  Dainton,  Bart., 
the  popular  member  for  the  Melton  Division  of  Hampshire," 
and  Lady  Dainton,  "who  is  organizing  a  sale  of  work  on  behalf 
of  the  victims  of  the  Vesuvius  eruption."  If  a  hospital 
matinee  took  place,  Miss  Sonia  Dainton  sold  programmes; 
a  theatrical  garden-party,  and  she  managed  a  stall ;  a  mission 
bazaar,  and  she  pinned  in  fading  buttonholes  at  half  a  crown  a 
time.  And  punctually  the  "Tickler"  or  "Catch"  would  de- 
pict her  at  work  with  her  fellows — Lady  Hermione  Prideaux, 
all  teeth  and  hat,  on  one  side;  and  Miss  Betty  Marsden,  the 
light  comedy  star  from  the  Avenue  Theatre,  on  the  other. 
And  when  the  last  Vesuvius  victim  had  been  clothed  in  crewel 
work  and  London  had  emptied,  the  indefatigable  camera-man 


170  SONIA 

would  take  wing  to  the  country  and  photograph  "Lady  Dain- 
ton  and  her  daughter  at  their  beautiful  Hampshire  seat." 

Sonia  repaid  the  trouble  as  well  as  Lady  Hamilton  or  La 
Giaconda.  And  I  think  if  hard  work  by  itself  is  to  be  re- 
warded, Lady  Dainton  got  no  more  than  her  deserts.  Ex  pede 
Herculetn,  and  I  judge  her  day  by  the  hour  she  spared  for  the 
War  Fund.  The  Committee  Meeting  was  taken  comfortably 
and  unhurriedly  in  her  stride.  She  was  at  the  time  a  dignitary 
of  the  Order  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem,  a  Primrose  League 
Dame,  a  Visitor  to  half  a  dozen  girls'  schools,  the  president 
of  several  nursing  and  Needlework  Guilds  and — I  believe — 
a  vice-president  of  every  Girls'  Club,  Rescue  Home,  Purity 
League  and  Association  of  Decayed  Gentlewomen  in  the 
kingdom.  Lady  Dainton  was  one  of  those  women  who  ac- 
cumulated arduous  and  unpaid  offices  as  dukes  collected  di- 
rectorships in  the  golden  days  of  the  company-promoting  'nine- 
ties. What  is  more,  she  worked  hard  at  all  of  them.  When 
I  think  of  her  hurrying  from  Committee  to  Prizegiving,  and 
from  Prizegiving  to  Sale  of  Work,  I  almost  cease  to  regard 
woman  as  man's  physical  inferior,  though  I  may  still  wonder 
how  far  the  world's  general  welfare  would  have  been  retarded 
had  she  remained  at  home  with  her  feet  on  a  sofa  and  a 
novel  in  her  lap. 

I  certainly  think  Sonia  would  have  lived  happier  if  she 
had  never  set  foot  in  London.  Her  personal  success  went  to 
her  head,  and  it  took  ten  years  of  three  lives  and  a  war  at 
the  end  to  sober  her  and  restore  some  sense  of  prospective. 
"You  can  give  corn  to  thoroughbreds"  my  untie  would  begin 
— and  then  I  usually  changed  the  subject.  A  woman,  in 
Bertrand's  Oriental  eyes,  was  the  plaything  of  so  much  sexual 
passion,  irresponsible  and  unsafe  until  she  was  veiled  and 
married,  and  even  then  perverse  and  unbalanced. 

"To  a  man,  sex  is  an  incident,"  he  would  say;  "to  a 
woman,  it's  everything  in  this  world  and  the  next.  You  are 
too  full  of  idealism,  George.  You  pretend  man's  perfectible, 
that  woman's  got  a  capacity  for  disinterested  self-sacrifice. 
You'll  outgrow  that  phase,  my  boy;  you'll  find  that  with  all 
our  inventions  and  discoveries  and  religions  and  philosophies 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  1-7 1 

and  civilization  and  culture,  we're  devilish  little  way  removed 
from  the  beasts.  That  young  woman — I  mention  no  names 
if  it's  a  sore  point  with  you — may  turn  into  an  admirable 
mother,  but  as  an  unsatisfied  beast  of  prey  .  .  .  My  dear 
boy,  it's  not  her  fault,  and  you  and  your  friends  have  con- 
tributed to  make  her  what  she  is." 

Contributed,  perhaps.  But,  if  not  her  fault,  neither  was 
it  ours,  but  the  fault  of  Society  and  human  nature,  the  action 
and  reaction  of  the  sexes.  As  the  year  drew  to  its  close  I 
was  too  deeply  immersed  in  politics  to  watch  the  social  comedy, 
but  in  the  summer  and  autumn  there  was  little  else  to  do. 
For  five  months  I  observed  the  psychological  development  of 
a  girl  who  was  physically  attractive — and  nothing  more :  not 
gifted,  not  clever,  not  accomplished,  of  no  spiritual  grandeur 
— a  dainty,  brilliant,  social  butterfly.  Sonia  was  no  more  than 
that :  I  doubt  if  she  ever  will  be  more.  Yet  men  are  so  con- 
stituted that  it  was  enough  to  assure  her  triumph. 

O'Rane  and  I  observed  in  company.  He  was  pledged  to 
bear-lead  young  Summertown  through  the  United  States  in 
August  and  September,  and  till  that  time  I  prevailed  on  him 
to  leave  the  industrial  conditions  of  England  alone.  The 
emptiness  of  our  life  must,  I  fear,  have  galled  him,  and, 
looking  back  on  it  all,  I  made  a  mistake  in  bringing  him  in 
view  of  Sonia  and  her  gaudy  fellow-butterflies.  Technically 
they  met  as  old  friends  without  a  claim  on  one  another,  each 
free  to  repent  in  any  given  way  of  their  rash  early  engage- 
ment. In  practice  the  liberty  was  one-sided:  the  greater 
Sonia's  emancipation,  the  more  critical  he  became ;  and  Sonia, 
who  was  no  fonder  of  criticism  than  any  good-looking  girl 
in  her  first  season,  grew  first  restless,  then  resentful  and  finally 
rebellious.  When  I  said  good-bye  to  Raney  at  Euston,  I  felt 
he  was  not  leaving  a  day  too  soon ;  and  this  is  not  to  blame 
him,  but  to  underline  the  impossible  position  he  and  Sonia  had 
taken  up. 

Before  ke  left  I  recall  a  series  of  indecisive  skirmishes. 
There  was,  for  example,  the  Covent  Garden  engagement,  in 
which  I  was  routed.  With  a  misguided  idea  of  friendliness 
and  in  an  attempt  to  separate  Crabtree  and  Sonia  before  the 


1 72  SONIA 

whole  of  London  had  coupled  their  names,  I  placed  my  uncle's 
box  at  the  Daintons'  disposal,  and,  whenever  we  found  an 
opera  we  liked,  Lady  Dainton,  Sonia,  Raney  and  I  used  to 
dine  together  either  in  Princes  Gardens  or  Rutland  Gate  and 
drive  down  together  to  Covent  Garden.  O'Rane  was  a 
musician ;  I  had  an  untutored  love  of  music ;  Lady  Dainton,  I 
fancy,  felt  it  was  the  right  thing  to  do,  and  Sonia  was  too 
overwrought  and  overexcited  to  mind  what  the  invitation  was 
so  long  as  she  could  accept  it.  Roger  Dainton,  who  rimed 
'Lied'  with  'Slide,'  professed  zeal  for  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  such  occasions,  and  on  reflection  I  admire  him  for 
his  frank  Philistinism.  With  Sonia  chattering  unconcernedly 
through  "Tristan,"  and  with  her  mother  leaning  out  to  bow 
to  her  social  acquisitions  until  I  expected  every  moment  to 
have  to  clutch  her  by  the  heels,  the  way  of  the  Wagerian  was 
strait  and  thorny.  But  then,  as  Sonia  said,  "You  come  to 
Covent  Garden  to  see  people." 

It  was  in  seeing  and  being  seen  that  we  courted  disaster. 
One  night,  as  I  was  ordering  coffee  in  the  lounge,  Crabtree 
attached  himself  to  our  party  and  accompanied  us  to  our  box* 
The  next  night  I  found  him  dining  at  Rutland  Gate,  and  he 
asked  me — before  the  soup  plates  were  removed — whether  I 
could  squeeze  him  into  a  corner;  he  was  prepared,  if  neces- 
sary to  stand.  And  no  sooner  had  he  secured  a  programme 
than  he  exclaimed: 

"  'II  Trovatore !'  I  love  that !  To-morrow  night,  too,  by 
Jove " 

"Well,  why  .  .  ."    Sonia  began  and  looked  at  me. 
"You'd  better  roll  along  here,  Crabtree,"  I  said. 

He  brought  a  heavy  hand  crashing  on  to  my  knee. 

"Stout  fellow !"  he  cried.  "What  about  dinner  ?  Will  you 
come  to  me,  or  shall  I  come  to  you,  or — or  what  ?" 

"Oh,  you'd  better  all  dine  with  us,"  suggested  Lady  Dain- 
ton, tactfully,  as  he  hesitated  to  fill  in  particulars  of  his  invi- 
tation. 

"Raney  and  I  have  got  some  men  dining  with  us  at  the 
Club,  I'm  afraid,"  I  improvised.  And  as  we  walked  home  I 
remarked,  "We  are  beaten,  my  son." 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  i?3 

"What  a  city  to  loot  London  is!"  O'Rane  murmured. 
The  criticism,  if  not  original,  was  at  least  true.  I  called  it 
to  mind  whenever  I  found  Crabtree  feeding  himself  at  his 
friends'  expense,  or  Sonia  accepting  invitations  from  people 
she  disliked  rather  than  drop  for  an  instant  out  of  the  race. 

"I  imagine  we're  becoming  Americanized,  Raney,"  I  said 
one  afternoon  a  few  weeks  later  when  he  and  I  called  on  the 
Daintons  to  say  good-bye  before  leaving  London. 

"The  girls  are,"  he  answered.  "They  think  men  exist  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  buying  'em  sweets,  taking  them  to  theatres, 
running  errands  for  them.  Just  listen."  He  crossed  the  room 
and  drew  up  a  chair  by  Sonia.  "What  have  you  been  doing 
lately,  Bambina?" 

Sonia  wrinkled  her  brow  in  sudden  petulance. 

"I  wish  you'd  drop  that  silly  name,  David,"  she  said. 

"What  have  you  been  doing,  Sonia  ?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  heavens !  What  haven't  I  ?  Mr.  Erckmann  took  me 
to  a  meet  of  the  Four-in-Hand  Club  yesterday.  I  dined  with 
Lord  Summertown  at  the  Berkeley.  We  went  on  to  the 
Vaudeville,  had  supper  at  the  Savoy,  and  then — and  then — 
oh  yes,  we  danced  with  Hardrodt,  the  soda-water  king.  Why 
weren't  you  there,  George?" 

"Frankly,  I  haven't  much  use  for  Hardrodt,"  I  said.  "The 
only  time  I  met  him  I  thought  he  was  a  bit  of  an  outsider." 

Sonia  spread  out  her  hands  with  a  movement  of  depreca- 
tion. 

"But  Society  lives  by  its  outsiders." 

"A  man  oughtn't  to  get  tight  in  other  people's  houses,"  I 
persisted. 

"Well,  it  was  his  own  house  last  night." 

"Did  he  keep  sober?"  I  asked. 

"Well,  there  are  sober  men  and  sober  men,"  she  answered. 
"  'Not  drunk,  but  having  drink  taken.'  " 

O'Rane  looked  at  her  gravely  for  a  moment,  then  he  asked : 

"Why  d'you  allow  yourself  to  be  seen  in  a  house  like 
that?" 

"What's  the  harm?"  Sonia  demanded  gaily.  "He  did  us 
awfully  well." 


i74  SONIA 

"You  admit  he's  an  outsider,  yet  you  accept  his  hospital- 
ity " 

"Oh,  you  little  Oxford  boys  with  your  logic  1"  Sonia 
laughed.  "Have  a  choc.  ?  They're  Lord  Summer-town's  fare- 
well present.  You'll  take  care  of  him  in  America,  won't  you, 
David?  He's  such  a  love,  I  should  never  forgive  you  if  you 
lost  him.  What  are  you  going  to  do  out  there  ?" 

At  the  sound  of  his  own  name  Summertown  joined  us. 

"I'm  going  to  learn  American,"  he  assured  us.  "Say,  this 
is  my  fi'ist  visit  to  the  U-nited  States.  Gee !  I  reckon  this  is 
a  bully  place.  Pleased  to  meet  you,  Miss  Dainton.  I  say, 
Raney,  what's  the  proper  answer  to  that  ?" 

"No  mere  European  has  ever  discovered.  Get  it  in  first 
and  then  clear  out  while  they're  still  feeling  for  their  guns." 

"You're  a  fat  lot  of  use,"  Summertown  retorted.  "Here 
I'm  going  out  to  improve  my  mind.  What's  a  'cinch'?  And 
this  rotten  American  War  of  Independence  I'm  always  up 
against — when'll  it  be  over  ?  I  want  to  be  a  pukka  Yank." 

"You'll  be  more  esteemed  as  you  are,"  O'Rane  answered. 
"Better  let  me  do  the  talking." 

"Oh,  you'll  only  be  taken  for  an  Irish  immigrant,"  returned 
Summertown. 

There  he  was  wide  of  the  mark.  There  is  a  story  that 
O'Rane,  in  shovel  hat  and  clerical  collar,  bearded  the  night  por- 
ter of  his  own  college  at  two  in  the  morning  and  gained  per- 
mission to  call  on  one  of  the  chaplains  in  Meadow  Buildings. 
I  have  seen  him  successfully  assume  an  alien  nationality  in 
Montmartre,  Seville  and  Leghorn;  while  the  first  draft  of 
American  Rhodes  scholars,  scattered  though  they  be  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth,  may  recall  the  inaugural  address  delivered 
in  hearing  of  the  scandalized  Caesars  by  an  alleged  attache  of 
the  United  States  Embassy. 

They  may  remember  a  slight,  passionate  figure  with  black 
hair  and  arresting  eyes  who  urged  them  in  the  name  of  their 
great  Republic  to  resist  all  interference  with  their  liberty 
on  the  part  of  the  University  authorities  and  to  lynch  any 
black  men  they  found  lurking  around  Balliol  or  St.  John's. 
Robert  Hawke,  of  Texas  and  Hertford,  six  feet  five  and 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  175 

proportionately  broad,  may  not  yet  have  forgotten  the  night 
when  the  imposture  was  discovered;  he  alone  may  be  able  to 
explain  why,  after  pursuing  Raney  down  Holywell  with  a 
loaded  revolver  and  running  him  to  earth  in  Hell  Passage,  he 
tamely  consented  to  breakfast  next  morning  with  the  man 
he  had  sworn  to  slay.  The  Rhodes  scholars  were  a  fair  mark 
for  O'Rane  whenever  he  had  an  outbreak.  Creevey,  of  Mel- 
bourne and  Trinity,  still  preserves  the  peremptory  note  that 
bade  him  call  next  morning  on  the  Junior  Proctor,  Mr.  D. 
O'Rane,  though  the  House  Mission  has  probably  long  ere  this 
expended  the  five-shilling  fine  for  non-attendance  at  the  first 
University  Sermon  of  the  term.  To  add  one  digression  to 
another,  I  have  never  understood  how  O'Rane  survived  four 
years  at  Oxford  without  being  sent  down. 

The  Covent  Garden  skirmish  was  my  affair,  and  after  sum- 
mary defeat  I  retired  into  private  life.  O'Rane's  moral  lecture 
was  no  more  successful  than  my  diplomacy :  the  Americaniza- 
tion of  women  went  on  unchecked — if  indeed  the  American 
girl  be  as  Raney  saw  her,  a  social  prostitute  who  would  sell 
herself  to  the  highest  bidder  and  give  as  little  as  possible  in 
return ;  I  privately  believe  the  breed  to  be  indigenous  to  the 
wealthier  strata  of  English  society.  He  failed  and  retired  to 
the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  Between  the  two  skirmishes 
came  the  intervention  of  Loring  House. 

I  was  taking  pot-luck  there  one  night  when  Lady  Amy 
asked  me  in  an  undertone  how  Raney's  engagement  was 
progressing.  I  told  her  all  I  knew,  and  she  broke  a  significant 
silence  by  observing : 

"Oh,  I  just  wanted  to  know." 

It  was  not  all  she  wanted  to  know,  and  I  ventured  to  tell 
her  so. 

"Well,  Sonia  really  is  behaving  rather  extraordinarily,"  she 
went  on.  "I  wonder  her  mother  .  .  ." 

"Lady  Dainton  accompanies  her  everywhere,"  I  pointed 
out. 

"Yes,  either  she  doesn't  see  or  she  doesn't  care." 

"Probably  she  thinks  there's  no  harm  in  it." 

Lady  Amy  shook  her  head. 


176  SONIA 

"This  is  my  fourth  season,  George." 

"And  their  first.  I  submit  that  they  don't  know  how  many 
people  sit  round  the  walls  of  a  ballroom  inventing  scandal." 

"Well,  someone  ought  to  tell  her.  You're  a  friend  of  the 
family." 

"Not  if  I  know  it,  Amy!"  I  said.  "This  is  not  a  man's 
job." 

"I'd  do  it  myself,  if  I  knew  how  to  start." 

"You've  only  to  tell  her  there's  safety  in  numbers,"  I 
suggested. 

It  is  to  be  presumed  my  advice  was  followed  quite  literally, 
for  the  next  time  I  dined  at  Rutland  Gate  the  party  had 
doubled  in  size,  and  no  one  got  enough  to  drink.  Sonia  very 
dutifully  granted  dances  to  all  the  male  guests  and,  so  far  as 
I  could  see,  impartially  encouraged  all  to  make  love  to  her. 
Certainly  she  discussed  the  possibility  of  platonic  friendship 
with  me  at  10.45,  when  I  had  hardly  finished  my  dinner ;  and 
four  hours  later,  when  Valentine  Arden  was  changing  his 
second  buttonhole,  I  observed  the  expression  of  weariness  that 
settled  onto  his  passionless,  immobile  features  when  rash  new- 
comers sought  to  shake  his  precocious  celibacy. 

"When  does  a  girl  get  over  the  awkward  age?"  he  de- 
manded. 

"At  death,"  I  hazarded,  and  he  left  me  in  disgust,  because 
he  clearly  wanted  to  tell  me  the  answer  himself. 

Thus  to  some  extent  Amy  Loring  succeeded  where  Raney 
and  I  had  failed,  but  her  ultimate  defeat  was  more  humiliating 
than  ours.  After  the  last  War  Fund  meeting  of  the  season 
I  went  up  stairs  to  find  a  cup  of  tea  and  say  good-bye  to 
Sonia  before  starting  out  on  my  autumn  campaign  among  the 
electors  of  Wiltshire.  Crabtree  was  with  her,  and  in  a  jaded, 
end-of -season  spirit  they  were  discussing  future  arrange- 
ments and  enumerating  the  houses  they  "had  to"  visit. 

"When  are  you  going  to  House  of  Steynes,  George  ?"  Sonia 
asked. 

I  gave  her  the  date,  and  we  found  we  were  invited  for  the 
same  week. 

"You're  not  selected,  are  you,  Tony?"  she  asked  Crabtree. 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  177 

"Well,  I  don't  quite  know  how  I'm  fixed,"  he  answered, 
without  committing  himself.  "I'm  due  with  the  Fordyces  for 
the  Twelfth,  and  from  there  .  .  ." 

He  worked  out  a  chain  of  houses  running  from  the  south- 
west to  the  north-east  of  Scotland.  House  of  Steynes,  of 
course,  lay  across  his  path ;  the  only  question  was  whether  he 
could  fit  in.  ... 

"By  Jove,  yes  !"  he  exclaimed,  with  an  air  of  one  making  an 
unexpected  discovery.  "A  blank  week!  I've  a  very  good 
mind  to  ask  old  Loring  if  he  can  give  me  a  bed !  It's  a  rotten 
business  staying  at  an  hotel,  and  if  you're  all  going  to  be 
there  .  .  ." 

He  finished  his  tea  and  drove  to  Curzon  Street.  Loring 
was  at  home,  the  case  for  charity  was  presented,  and  Crabtree 
carried  the  day.  In  an  age  of  artificial  politeness  no  other 
result  was  possible ;  House  of  Steynes  could  accommodate  half 
a  regiment,  and  there  had  never  been  a  breach  or  the  oppor- 
tunity of  a  breach. 

"The  dirty,  greasy  dog!"  Loring  fumed  when  we  met  at 
dinner.  And  for  want  of  a  better  description,  "The  dirty, 
greasy  dog!" 

VI 

I  have  never  calculated  the  proportion  of  independent  men 
outside  the  Navy,  Army,  Church  and  Stage  who  have  neither 
stood  as  parliamentary  candidates  nor  worked  on  behalf  of  a 
friend  or  neighbour.  It  must  be  almost  negligible,  and  no 
useful  purpose  will  be  served  by  a  description  of  my  first 
canvass.  It  was  conventional  in  every  feature — from  the 
underpaid  rustics  who  believed  their  landlords  could  some- 
how see  into  the  walls  of  a  ballot-box  to  the  Big  and 
Little  Loaf  pamphlets  and  the  Chinese  Labour  posters  which 
the  Liberal  Publication  Department  rained  down  on  me  in 
return  for  ridiculously  few  shillings  and  pence.  My  speeches 
were  as  conventional  as  the  personalities  exchanged  with  the 
Honourable  Trevor  Lawless,  the  sitting  member,  who  invited 
me  to  dine,  expressed  the  hope  that  the  election  would  be 


I78  SONIA 

conducted  as  among  gentlemen  and  then  uttered  statements 
for  which  I  had  to  make  him  apologize  on  the  front  page  of 
"The  Times." 

The  canvass  lasted  nearly  a  month,  and  I  returned  to 
Princes  Gardens  and  my  uncle  with  a  sense  that  I  had  more 
than  a  sporting  chance  of  carrying  the  seat.  With  all  a  young 
candidate's  assured  enthusiasm  I  gave  Bertrand  full  resumes 
of  all  my  speeches  and  underlined  the  telling  points,  till  a 
more  than  usually  unconcealed  yawn  reminded  me  that  he 
too  had  addressed  mass  meetings  and  conducted  door-to-door 
visitations. 

"But  where  are  the  Ideals,  George?"  he  demanded  after 
my  exposition  of  "The  Case  against  Tariff  Reform."  "Where 
is  your  Imperial  Federation,  your  Secular  Solution,  your  new 
Poor  Law,  your  Land  Scheme,  your  Housing  Reform?  Have 
you  outgrown  that  phase  ?" 

"I  can't  say  they  went  down  very  well,"  I  answered.  "The 
Food  Taxes " 

My  uncle  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed. 

"Democracy !    What  crimes  are  committed  in  thy  name !" 

"The  people  aren't  educated  up  to  it,"  I  returned  unguard- 
edly. 

"So  you  stirred  them  with  largely  imaginary  accounts  of 
labour  conditions  on  the  Rand,  you  played  on  their  fears  of 
dearer  food;  and,  if  they  return  you,  you'll  blithely  scrap  the 
existing  Constitution,  interfere  with  the  liberty  of  the  subject 
in  every  conceivable  way.  George,  George,  you  have  much  to 
learn  of  representative  government." 

The  tone  of  my  uncle's  criticism  nettled  me — possibly  be- 
cause I  felt  it  was  justified. 

"If  you  wait  to  get  a  lead  from  below,"  I  said,  "you'll  wait 
all  your  life  without  attempting  anything!" 

Bertrand  shook  his  head  uncomprehendingly. 

"This  fury  for  Reform!"  he  exclaimed.  "When  you've 
outgrown  the  phase,  George,  you  may  perhaps  recall  my  words 
of  wisdom.  I'm  a  democrat  because  I  believe  the  folly  of 
many  is  better  than  the  corruption  of  few.  Sometimes  I  ask 
my  constituents  to  support  me  in  advocating  a  change,  some- 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  179 

times  they  press  a  change  on  me;  and,  if  I  approve  or  can't 
argue  them  out  of  it,  I  push  it  on  their  behalf.  The  rest  of 
the  time  I'm  content  to  see  that  democracy  doesn't  lose  its 
privileges.  I  defend  the  existing  order  from  Tory  attacks. 
Peace — Economy — and  personal  liberty  to  do  what  you  dam' 
please  so  long  as  you  don't  hinder  another  man  from  doing 
what  he  dam'  pleases.  I  don't  affect  the  modern  craving  for 
legislation ;  I've  still  to  learn  that  it's  wanted,  and  if  it's  wanted 
you  must  prove  that  it  suits  the  genius  of  the  race.  And  I  hold 
that  the  English  find  salvation  quickest  and  best  if  you  leave 
'em  to  'emselves.  Of  course,  that's  unfashionable  nowadays. 
I  shall  be  a  bit  of  a  candid  friend  to  our  Government  when  we 
get  back.  But  you  and  I  are  poles  apart.  With  the  recognition 
of  the  Unions  and  the  extension  of  the  Franchise  the  active 
work  of  radicalism  is  done." 

His  easy,  Pangloss  tone  exasperated  me. 

"And  sweated  Labour  .  .  .?"  I  began. 

"Start  your  minimum  wage,  and  it  may  pay  a  man  to  scrap 
low-grade  labour  and  put  in  machines." 

"Are  you  satisfied  with  our  present  haphazard  Empire  ?" 

"You're  not  going  to  cement  it  by  a  tariff  or  a  high- 
falutin'  proclamation,"  he  answered.  "When  anyone  wants 
closer  union,  when  it's  worth  anyone's  while,  it'll  be  done. 
You  want  it.  Good.  Well,  do  a  little  missionizing  round 
the  Empire,  then;  don't  go  into  the  House  to  do  it."  He 
took  out  his  cigar-case  and  threw  it  over  to  me.  "Smoke  one 
and  don't  look  so  dam'  dejected,  George.  I've  been  in  the 
House  the  devil  of  a  long  time,  and  every  day  I  go  there  I'm 
more  and  more  impressed  with  the  extraordinary  little  that  can 
be  done  there.  I'm  not  being  discouraging  on  purpose ;  I  want 
to  save  you  from  a  crushing  disappointment.  Shed  a  few  of 
your  illusions,  get  rid  of  the  Thursday  Essays'  frame  of  mind 
— capital  debating-society  stuff  and  precious  little  more.  If 
you'll  remember  that  the  government  of  men  is  the  hardest 
thing  in  the  world,  that  this  country  is  a  very  old  and  illogical 
place,  with  a  half-feudal,  half -mercantile  aristocracy  still  in 
effective  occupation,  and  that  the  House  of  Commons  is  the 
clumsiest  tool  a  revolutionary  ever  had  to  handle,  you'll  be 


i8o  SONIA 

some  way  on  the  road  to  political  sanity.  Don't  merely  think 
of  ideal  reforms  and  get  hysterical  when  you  can't  bring  'em 
to  birth  with  the  aid  of  a  one-clause  Bill:  face  your  difficulties 
squarely,  see  the  utmost  extent  to  which,  with  all  your  courage 
and  perseverance,  you  can  overcome  them,  and  then  never 
rest  till  you've  secured  up  to  that  limit.  The  one  way  sends 
you  into  the  Cabinet;  the  other  makes  you  the  hero  of  a 
party  of  three  in  the  Smoking-Room.  Needless  to  say,  you 
think  I'm  deliberately  damping  down  your  enthusiasm?" 

"I  think  you're  a  bit  jaundiced  by  twenty  years  of  Tory 
rule,"  I  said. 

"Dear  boy,  I  was  through  the  '80  Parliament,  and  the  '86 
and  the  '92.  If  you  want  things  done,  you'd  better  go  to 
Fleet  Street.  The  House  of  Commons  is  being  more  and  more 
ignored  each  day.  Gladstone  started  it  by  his  monster  meet- 
ings ;  he  could  speak  to  six  thousand  electors  instead  of  six 
hundred  members.  And  the  Press  learned  the  lesson.  A  group 
of  papers  that  get  into  every  hand  in  the  country,  permeate 
every  brain — that's  worth  a  year  of  perorations  and  lobbying. 
But  you'd  better  come  along  and  see  for  yourself.  There'll 
be  an  election  in  a  few  months  now,  so  you'd  better  not  waste 
too  much  time  paying  visits.  Nobody's  any  idea  what  our 
majority  will  be  like." 

Between  my  first  and  second  campaigns  I  paid  but  one 
visit — a  week  with  the  Lorings  at  House  of  Steynes.  The 
Daintons  were  there  before  me,  and  Valentine  Arden,  my 
cousin  Violet,  Prendergast  of  the  Foreign  Office,  Sally  Farwell 
and  her  mother,  Rupert  Harley  and  the  inevitable  Crabtree 
arrived  the  same  day.  There  was  good  shooting  and  tolerable 
golf,  and  in  the  evenings  and  on  wet  days  we  used  to  move 
the  furniture  and  rugs  out  of  the  library  and  dance  to  Roger 
Dainton's  heavy-footed  working  of  the  pianola.  Early  in 
life  Loring  had  appreciated  that  the  success  of  a  house-party 
depended  on  compelling  his  female  guests  to  breakfast  in 
their  rooms  and  allowing  everyone  to  do  what  he  liked  for 
the  rest  of  the  day.  We  talked,  shot,  danced,  played  bridge, 
ate,  drank,  slept — and  devised  ingenious  and  bloodthirsty  ways 
of  speeding  Crabtree  on  his  way  to  Banff. 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  1 8 1 

"And  if  he'd  take  that  Dainton  child  with  him,"  my  cousin 
exclaimed  on  the  evening  of  our  arrival,  "I  don't  think  any- 
body would  miss  them.  George,  what's  happened  to  her? 
She  used  to  be  such  a  nice  little  thing." 

"She  has  been  insufficiently  slapped,"  I  suggested.  "I 
am  now  a  serious  student  of  social  conditions;  I  have  spent 
ten  weeks  in  the  East  of  London  and  ten  months  in  the  West. 
It  is  my  considered  opinion  that  wife-beating  will  only  be 
stamped  out  when  women  are  beaten  regularly  and  severely 
before  they  become  wives." 

Violet's  pretty  blue  eyes  glanced  across  to  the  far  end 
of  the  hall  where  an  ill-suppressed  tittering  rose  from  behind 
an  oak  settle. 

"And  Mr.  Crabtree?"  she  asked. 

"I  have  seen  the  dog-fanciers  of  Shadwell  holding  his  like 
below  the  surface  of  a  rain-butt  for  five  minutes  at  a  time. 
In  Crabtree's  case  I  should  lengthen  the  period  to  avoid, 
risks.  Incidentally,  what  has  Sonia  been  doing?" 

She  brushed  the  low-clustering  curls  from  her  forehead 
with  an  angry  little  hand. 

"Have  you  ever  seen  a  shop-girl  with  two  men  on  the 
pier  at  Brighton?"  she  demanded. 

"My  education  was  skimped,"  I  had  to  admit. 

"Well,  you  can  make  up  for  it  now,"  she  said,  as  Loring 
appeared  and  claimed  her  for  the  first  dance. 

I  began  making  up  for  it  next  morning  when  the  Lorings 
and  Violet  were  at  Mass.  Refusing  to  breakfast  alone  in  her 
room,  Sonia  raided  a  silent  but  amicable  bachelor  party  in 
the  dining-room,  engaged  it  in  conversation  and  inquired  its 
plans  for  the  day.  None  of  us  was  anxious  to  shoot  on  the 
morrow  of  our  journey,  and  after  considerable  deliberation 
she  decided  to  play  golf  with  Prendergast.  They  started  off 
at  ten,  and  by  one-thirty  Prendergast  had  had  his  devotion 
sorely  tried. 

"I  told  her  to  take  a  jersey,"  he  confided  to  me  in  the 
smoking-room.  "She  wouldn't.  She  went  out  in  a  north- 
east wind  with  a  blouse  you  could  see  through,  and  when 
we  got  to  the  links  I  had  to  come  back  and  find  her  a  coat. 


1 82  SONIA 

We  got  on  famously  till  we  reached  the  third  tee,  then  she 
said  she  was  too  hot  and  I  must  carry  the  damned  thing 
because  the  caddie's  hands  were  dirty.  I  gave  her  a  stroke 
a  hole  and  was  dormy  at  the  turn ;  then  she  must  needs  say 
she  was  tired  and  insist  on  coming  home.  At  the  club-house 
she  discovered  she  was  hungry  and  sent  me  in  to  forage.  I 
brought  her  out  sandwiches,  cake,  chocolate,  and  milk."  He 
checked  the  list  with  emphatic  ringers.  "She  looked  at  them 
and  said  they  weren't  nice  and  she  could  hang  on  till  lunch- 
time.  Making  a  fool  of  a  fellow,"  he  concluded  indignantly. 

I  murmured  suitable  words  of  sympathy  and  imagined 
that  he  had  now  learned  his  lesson.  At  luncheon,  however, 
Sonia  sat  next  to  him  and,  with  her  innocent  brown  eyes 
looking  into  his,  asked  him  to  describe  his  work  at  the  Foreign 
Office.  When  we  left  the  table  he  was  enslaved  a  second 
time.  As  the  wind  had  dropped  and  rain  was  beginning  to 
fall,  she  sent  him  to  find  a  book  she  had  lost ;  when  he  returned 
with  it  she  was  too  sleepy  to  read  and  demanded  bridge 
to  keep  her  awake;  no  sooner  had  the  table  been  set  and 
three  unwilling  players  dragged  from  their  slumbers  in  the 
smoking-room  than  she  decided  the  weather  had  cleared  up 
sufficiently  for  her  to  take  a  walk. 

"Anyone  coming?"  she  asked  at  large. 

Loring,  Prendergast,  Crabtree  and  I  offered  our  services 
as  escort — in  that  order  and  with  a  certain  interval  between 
the  third  and  fourth. 

"Well,  run  along  and  get  ready,"  she  ordered,  "or  the 
rain'll  begin  again.  I  shall  go  as  I  am." 

When  we  returned  with  overcoats  and  thick  boots  she 
looked  uncertainly  at  her  thin  shoes  and  inquired : 

"Is  it  really  wet  outside?    Perhaps  I'd  better  change." 

And  change  she  did — every  stitch  of  clothing  she  possessed, 
I  imagine,  for  a  full  half -hour  had  passed  before  she 
descended  in  shooting-boots,  Burberry  and  short  skirt;  and 
by  that  time  tea  was  ready  and  the  rain  had  set  in  for  the 
night.  Variations  on  the  same  theme  were  played  daily 
under  the  eyes  of  Lady  Loring,  who  was  too  placid  to  mind 
anything  that  did  not  affect  her  beloved  Amy  or  Jim;  under 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  183 

the  eyes,  too,  of  Lady  Dainton,  who,  I  believe,  had  hardly 
issued  a  command  or  rebuke  to  Sonia  from  the  day  of  her 
birth.  Crabtree  and  Prendergast  openly  kissed  the  rod,  Lor- 
ing  good-humouredly  regarded  such  treatment  as  being  all  in 
the  day's  work  of  a  host;  with  the  women  I  suppose  Violet's 
criticism  was  expressive  of  the  general  feeling.  I  frankly 
derived  a  certain  lazy  amusement  from  watching  Sonia  play- 
ing the  oldest  game  in  the  world;  she  seldom  bothered  me, 
and,  while  others  ran  errands,  I  was  free  to  spend  idle  hours 
in  the  smoking-room  with  Valentine  Arden,  whose  sex-phi- 
losophy taught  him  that,  if  a  woman  wanted  him,  she  must 
first  come  and  find  him.  Each  day  we  elaborated  a  new  and 
more  masterly  scheme  for  recalling  Crabtree  to  town:  each 
day  we  foundered  on  the  same  reef  and  forced  the  con- 
versation at  dinner  in  our  attempt  to  discover  his  address  in 
Lincoln's  Inn  and  the  name  of  his  clerk. 

It  is  perhaps  humiliating  to  confess  that  his  dislodgement, 
when  it  came,  was  not  at  our  hands.  I  recall  one  afternoon 
when  Prendergast  fell  from  favour;  Sonia  forswore  a  walk 
with  him  and  invited  Crabtree  to  give  his  opinion  of  a  new 
brassy  she  had  just  received  from  Edinburgh.  They  set  out 
immediately  after  luncheon  (in  those  days  Sonia  did  not 
smoke  and  could  not  understand  how  it  could  be  necessary 
to  anyone  else) ;  at  tea-time  she  returned  alone — rather 
white  and  subdued — and  went  straight  to  her  room.  Her 
mother,  Lady  Loring  and  Amy  visited  her  in  turn  and  re- 
ported that  she  was  over-tired  and  had  lain  down  with  a 
headache.  As  we  started  tea,  a  telegram  arrived  for  Crabtree, 
followed  by  Crabtree  himself.  Tearing  open  the  envelope, 
he  informed  us  with  fine  surprise  that  his  clerk  had  sum- 
moned him  back  to  chambers  to  advise  on  an  important  case ; 
might  he  have  a  car,  would  Lady  Loring  excuse  him  .  .  .  ? 
Valentine  Arden,  with  an  author's  small-minded  jealousy  in 
matters  of  copyright,  dropped  and  broke  a  plate  in  sheer 
vexation,  though  to  his  credit  be  it  said  that  the  anger  was 
short-lived,  and,  when  Loring  himself  strolled  round  to  the 
garage  to  see  that  his  orders  had  not  been  misunderstood, 
Valentine  was  filling  a  petrol  tank  as  enthusiastically  as  I 


i84  SONIA 

had  offered  to  help  in  the  packing  and  dispatch  of  our  fellow- 
guest. 

With  her  taste  for  good  'entrances,'  Sonia  appeared  as 
the  car  turned  out  of  sight  down  the  drive.  The  headache 
was  gone,  and  throughout  dinner  she  was  almost  hilarious, 
though  by  the  time  we  had  finished  our  cigars  she  had  retired 
to  bed.  Two  hours  later  I  met  Amy  coming  out  of  her 
room:  she  beckoned  me  to  a  window-seat  by  the  "Mary 
Queen  of  Scots"  room,  and  we  sat  down. 

"Thank  goodness  that's  over!"  she  exclaimed,  passing  her 
hand  over  her  eyes. 

"Is  Sonia  upset?"  I  asked. 

Amy  shook  her  head  and  sighed. 

"I  can't  make  out,"  she  answered.  "They've — sort  of 
parted  friends.  I  think  she's  rather  glad  he  proposed — and 
thoroughly  frightened  when  it  came  to  the  point.  George, 
does  David  fancy  he's  going  to  marry  her  ?" 

"I  believe  he  thinks  so." 

"I'm  not  sure  that  I  envy  him.  But,  if  he  is,  he'd  better 
hurry  up.  Sonia  doesn't  let  much  grass  grow  under  her  feet. 
I  really  rather  hope  mother  won't  let  her  be  asked  here  again." 

"But  as  long  as  your  Prendergasts  and  Crabtrees  spread 
their  faces  out  to  be  walked  on "  I  began. 

"Well,  don't  let  her  do  it  here,"  Amy  interrupted.  "I 
don't  want  to  see  dear  old  Jim  scalped." 

"He's  much  too  lazy,"  I  said. 

Amy  raised  her  eyebrows  in  surprise. 

"My  dear,  you're  not  very  observant." 

"I've  been  watching  rather  closely,"  I  protested.  "He's 
decently  civil " 

"To  her,  yes.  But  d'you  remember  a  certain  Horse  Show 
week  when  we  were  staying  with  the  Hunter-Oakleighs  in 
Dublin,  and  Jim  and  Violet " 

"But  that's  the  ancientest  of  ancient  history!  Jim  was 
hardly  short-coated  at  the  time." 

"They  kept  it  up  a  good  while,"  she  answered,  with  a  toss 
of  the  head. 


BERTRAND  OAKLEIGH  185 

"Amy,  you're  a  shameless  match-maker.  First  of  all 
Raney  and  Sonia,  then  Jim  and  Violet " 

"As  long  as  it  isn't  the  other  way  round,  I  don't  mind. 
Sonia  isn't  even  a  Catholic." 

"Neither  Jim  nor  Sonia  will  marry  for  years  yet,"  I  said. 
"People  don't  nowadays.  You  have  a  much  better  time  un- 
married ;  there's  an  element  of  uncertainty  and  interest  about 
you  .  .  ." 

"There's  far  too  much  uncertainty,"  said  Amy,  with  a 
sigh.  "Sometimes  I  have  perfect  nightmares  about  Jim.  You 
see,  he  is  worth  a  woman's  while,  and  I  have  a  horror  that 
he'll  make  some  hideous  mistake  and  then  be  too  proud  to 
wriggle  out  of  it.  However,  don't  let's  meet  trouble  half-way." 

I  left  House  of  Steynes  two  days  later  and  crossed  to 
Ireland.  On  the  writing-table  of  my  library  at  Lake  House 
I  found  a  picture-postcard  representing  the  Singer  Building, 
with  the  question,  "Any  news?  Raney."  I  sent  a  postcard 
with  an  indifferent  photograph  of  the  landing-stage  at  Kings- 
town, inscribed  with  the  words,  "No  news.  George  Oakleigh." 
Then  I  said  good-bye  to  the  life  I  had  been  leading  since  my 
return  to  England.  Bertrand  wired  in  October  that  an  elec- 
tion was  imminent,  and  I  spent  the  autumn  in  an  Election 
fur  coat  and  an  Election  car,  tearing  from  end  to  end  of  my 
constituency  and  delivering  speeches  for  which — as  Gibbon 
might  have  said — the  part-author  of  "Thursday  Essays"  might 
afterwards  have  blushed  with  shame.  I  have  fought  but  two 
elections,  and  the  memory  of  the  cheap  pledges  and  cheaper 
pleasantries,  the  misleading  handbills  and  vile  posters — dis- 
tributed impartially  by  either  side — give  me  no  feeling  of 
moral  elation. 

And  in  1906  the  contamination  seemed  the  more  unwelcome 
for  being  superfluous.  There  was  room  for  high  thinking  and 
lofty  ideals  at  a  time  when  the  country  went  mad  in  its  lust 
to  restore  Liberalism  to  power.  Heaven  knows  what  pro- 
gramme I  could  not  have  put  forward  so  long  as  it  radically 
reversed  the  measures  and  spirit  of  the  Conservative  admin- 
istration ! 

Or  so  it  seemed  in  the  early  weeks  of  the  1906  Session, 


1 86  SONIA 

when  hundreds  of  new  members  pressed  forward  to  take  the 
Oath  and  sign  the  Roll  of  Parliament,  each  one  as  strong  in 
the  confidence  of  his  electors,  each  one  as  resolved  to  bring 
in  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth — and  each  one  as  innocent  of 
parliamentary  forms  of  procedure  as  myself. 


CHAPTER  IV 


SONIA  DAINTON 


"Go  back  but  a  hundred  generations  in  the  lineage  of  the  most 
delicate  girl  you  know,  and  you  will  find  a  dozen  murderers.  You 
will  find  liars  and  cheats,  lascivious  sinners,  women  who  have  sold 
themselves,  slaves,  imbeciles,  devotees,  saints,  men  of  fantastic 
courage,  discreet  and  watchful  persons,  usurers,  savages,  criminals 
and  kings,  and  every  one  of  this  miscellany,  not  simply  fathering 
or  mothering  on  the  way  to  her,  but  teaching  urgently  and  with 
every  grade  of  intensity,  views  and  habits  for  which  they  stand. 
Something  of  it  all  has  come  to  her,  albeit  much  may  seem  for- 
gotten. In  every  human  birth,  with  a  new  little  variation,  a  fresh 
slight  novelty  of  arrangement,  the  old  issues  rise  again.  Our  ideas, 
even  more  than  our  blood,  flow  from  multitudinous  sources." 
H.  G.  WELLS,  "An  Englishman  Looks  at  the  World." 


<6  "1     *  NGLAND  has  had  her  Long  Parliament  and  her  Short 
•H      Parliament.    On  my  soul,  George,  I  don't  know  that 
-•— '  this  won't  deserve  to  be  called  the  'Mad  Parliament.'  " 
The  speaker  was  my  uncle,  the  time  a  few  weeks  after  the 
beginning  of  the  1906  Session,  the  place  a  corner-seat  below 
the  gangway.     We  had  survived  the  oratorical  flood  of  the 
debate  on  the  Address  and  were  settling  down  to  work.    The 
giant  Liberal  majority,  "independent  of  the  Irish,"  as  we  used 
to  boast  in  those  days,  but  discreetly  respectful  to  the  dis- 
turbingly large  Labour  contingent,  was  finding  its  sea-legs; 

'87. 


1 88  SONIA 

new  members  no  longer  prefaced  their  exordia  with  a  "Mister 
Chairman  and  Gentlemen,"  and  the  lies  and  counter-lies  of 
the  Election,  the  sectional  mandates  from  the  electors  and 
the  specific  pledges  to  constituents  were  gradually  ceasing  to 
be  rehearsed  in  public.  We  passed  crushing  votes  of  confidence 
in  the  Free  Trade  system,  arranged  the  evacuation  of  the  Rand 
by  the  Chinese  coolies,  ascertained  that  the  parliamentary 
draughtsmen  were  wasting  no  time  over  our  Education  and 
Licensing  Bills, — and  lay  back  with  a  yawn  to  luxuriate  in 
our  own  strength,  and  dream  of  the  new  England  we  were 
calling  into  existence. 

For  a  time  our  work  was  negative.  After  twenty  years 
of  misrule  we  had  to  cleanse  the  country  before  we  could  begin 
our  inspired  task,  and  in  those  early  weeks  I  voted  correctly 
and  spent  the  rest  of  my  day  looking  round  me  and  attempt- 
ing to  memorize  the  new  faces.  The  Treasury  Bench  needed 
no  learning  I  had  met  some  of  the  Ministers  in  Princes  Gar- 
dens and  knew  the  rest  by  sight,  but  I  gazed  at  it  more  than  at 
any  other  part  of  the  House — in  a  spirit  of  hero-worship,  I 
suppose,  on  being  brought  into  working  partnership  with  men 
I  had  idealized  for  fifteen  years. 

In  ability  it  was  a  great  Ministry,  and  after  nearly  ten 
years  I  have  much  the  same  feeling  for  its  leading  members  as 
before:  the  same  love  for  'C.-B.,'  most  human,  diplomatic 
and  forgiving  of  men;  the  same  reverence  for  the  aloof, 
austere  Sir  Edward  Grey  with  his  Bunyanesque  Saxon  speech 
and  aura  of  Arthurian  romance ;  the  same  admiration  for  the 
boundless  intellectual  efficiency  of  Mr.  Haldane  and  Mr.  As- 
quith ;  and  the  same  delighted  uncertainty  in  watching  the 
volatile,  lambent  fire  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  genius.  In  the 
delicate  work  of  Cabinet-making,  the  deft  fingers  of  Sir  Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman  hardly  slipped,  and  to  a  Liberal  Leaguer 
like  myself  the  result  was  a  brilliant  compromise.  The  head 
and  legs,  the  Prime  Minister  and  the  lesser  office-holders,  were 
Radicals  of  the  Dispersion ;  the  body  was  made  up  of  Liberal 
Imperialists  who,  by  sheer  weight  of  intellect  and  personal 
authority,  might  be  expected  to  control  the  movements  of  the 
extremities. 


SONIA  DAINTON  189 

Yet,  when  the  history  of  the  1906  Parliament  comes  to  be 
written,  the  one  thing  stranger  than  the  capture  of  the  Cabinet 
by  the  Liberal  League  will  be  the  capture  of  the  Liberal 
League  by  the  unofficial  members.  The  House  was  over- 
whelmingly Radical  and  Nonconformist:  it  closed  its  ears 
to  the  wider  Imperialism,  and  in  'Liberal  League'  saw  but 
'Whig  Party'  writ  large.  The  result  was  hardly  fortunate. 
Rather  than  surrender  principle  or  power,  the  Whigs  went 
to  work  underground,  systematically  corrupting  the  Radical 
majority  in  the  House  in  the  brief  intervals  of  misleading  the 
Radical  majority  in  the  Cabinet.  Perhaps  it  was  invincible 
necessity  that  demanded  it,  perhaps  the  Whig  section  showed 
the  higher  statesmanship  in  committing  Democracy  to  a 
course  it  might  not  have  taken  without  blinkers.  I  say  no 
ftnore  than  that  it  was  unfortunate  in  its  effect  on  the  House 
4md  precarious  as  a  policy  on  which  life  and  death  depended. 
Which  Ministers  knew  what  they  were  fighting  for  or  against 
in  the  Big-and-Little-Navy  struggle?  Would  the  House 
have  yawned  so  impatiently  through  the  Army  debates  and 
the  formation  of  the  Expeditionary  Force  if  it  had  known 
the  Government's  continental  engagements?  Was  it  safe  to 
assume  that  a  great  pacific  party  would  declare  war  within 
a  few  hours  of  learning  the  promises  made  in  its  name  ? 

It  was  dangerous,  but  my  purpose  is  not  to  arraign 
Ministers.  Their  double  life  is  now  only  of  interest  to  me  as 
explaining  in  some  measure  the  sterility  of  that  monster 
majority  at  which  I  gazed  in  exultant  wonder  during  my  first 
session,  explaining,  too,  the  failure  of  that  Mad  Parliament 
which  looked  on  life  through  the  rose-tinted  sunset  haze  of  a 
"Back-to-the-Land"  campaign  and  concentrated  all  political 
justice  within  the  outer  cover  of  a  Plural  Voting  Bill.  By 
counting  heads,  we  were  so  powerful — and  we  did  so  little 
for  all  the  Utopias  we  foreshadowed  in  our  pulsing  perorations. 

"A  Mad  Parliament,  George,"  my  uncle  repeated,  "but  a 
devilish  funny  one.  We're  made  all  ready  to  reverse  the  Tory 
measures  of  the  last  four  or  five  years.  Now,  if  you  watch, 
you'll  see  the  poor  relations  coming  hat  in  hand  to  the  man- 
darins." 


190  SONIA 

I  watched  for  some  time,  inside  the  House  and  out; 
watched  and  saw  the  Nationalists — hardly  hat  in  hand — 
rejecting  the  Irish  Councils  Bill  and  calling  for  payment  in 
Home  Rule  currency.  I  saw  the  Labour  Party  fed  first  with 
the  Trades  Disputes  Bill,  then  with  the  provision  for  payment 
of  members;  and  I  saw  the  Welsh  mollified  with  a  promise 
of  Disestablishment.  It  was  to  everybody's  advantage  that 
the  Government  should  not  be  wound  up  till  the  preference 
shareholders  had  been  paid,  and  as  the  last  half-year's  interest 
became  due  the  commercial  travellers  of  the  Cabinet  started 
on  the  road  with  social  reform  samples — old  age  pensions, 
land  taxation,  small  holdings  and  insurance.  The  Radical 
Ministers  were  good  salesmen  and  did  a  roaring  trade ;  the 
country  settled  down  to  a  riot  of  social  legislation;  the  very 
board  of  Whig  directors  caught  something  of  the  infectious 
enthusiasm,  and,  as  it  was  too  late  to  talk  of  foreign  debenture 
holders,  the  least  they  could  do  was  to  increase  their  outlay 
to  attract  new  customers. 

There  was  tragi-comedy  in  the  spectacle,  for  the  board 
and  its  travellers  never  worked  in  harmony,  and  neither  sec- 
tion of  supporters  was  satisfied.  There  was  no  attempt  at 
comprehensive,  imaginative  social  reconstruction — nothing  but 
successive  sops  of  clamorous  minorities.  Of  my  Thursday 
Club  programme — with  its  Poor  Law  and  Housing  Reforms, 
its  Secular  Education  and  Federal  Parliament,  above  all  with 
its  determined  attempts  to  solve  the  Wage  Problem  and  free 
the  industrial  system  from  the  scandal  and  crime  of  strikes  and 
lock-outs,  not  one  item  was  achieved.  Not  one  item  had  a 
chance  of  being  achieved  when  the  contest  with  the  Lords  was 
postponed  beyond  the  rejection  of  the  first  Liberal  Bill.  But 
the  debts  had  not  then  been  paid.  Street  hoardings  still  bore 
tattered  remnants  of  fluttering  election  posters,  the  Liberals 
had  been  out  of  office  for  half  a  generation,  and  the  Whig 
foreign  policy  was  barely  begun. 

So  the  party  shirked  the  election,  its  groups  scrambled 
for  favours  from  the  Government,  and  Ministers  talked  social 
reform,  universal  brotherhood  and  a  "naval  holiday"  to  a 
House  they  were  afraid  to  take  into  their  confidence.  The 


SONIA  DAINTON  19 1 

1906  Parliament  might  have  produced  a  social  programme  or 
a  foreign  policy  with  the  backing  its  conditions  necessitated. 
It  did  neither.  No  one  troubled  to  educate  new  members  or 
organize  the  party.  It  was  chiefly,  I  think,  the  number  of 
groups,  the  strangeness  of  their  visions  and  their  common 
failure  to  recognize  the  impossible  in  politics,  that  moved 
my  uncle  to  speak  of  the  Mad  Parliament.  I  am  not  so  vain 
as  to  think  the  "Thursday  Programme"  wrote  the  last  word 
in  political  science;  I  do  claim,  however,  that  as  a  piece  of 
co-ordinated,  imaginative  thinking  it  treated  the  State  as 
a  whole,  not  as  a  bundle  of  warring  sections  to  be  divided 
and  ruled,  bribed  and  silenced.  It  attempted  to  bring  the 
machinery  of  government  into  line  with  twentieth-century 
requirements.  It  tried  to  carry  out,  at  leisure  and  in  a  spirit 
of  reason,  the  structural  changes  that  will  have  to  be  hurriedly 
improvised  after  the  war. 

By  the  time  I  had  learned  the  names  and  constituencies 
of  two-thirds  of  the  members  I  had  begun  to  notice  how 
individuals  agglomerated  in  the  Smoking-Room  and  lobbies. 
The  only  characteristic  common  to  every  group  was  that  it 
imagined  itself  the  apostle  of  an  exclusive  salvation.  The 
"Thursday  Party"  was  reproduced  a  dozen  times  over,  and,  in 
looking  back  sadly  on  the  futility  of  all  our  empty  dreams,  I 
feel  that  the  Whips'  Office  must  be  held  responsible  for  wasting 
the  greatest  opportunity  of  reform  since  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. So  long  as  we  voted  obediently,  nothing  mattered  We 
were  never  welded  into  a  party,  never  educated  politically; 
and  the  waste  of  enthusiasm  was  hardly  less  criminal  than 
the  waste  of  talent. 

I  can  speak  impersonally  in  this  matter,  for  no  one  dreamed 
of  thinking  me  fit  for  the  most  insignificant  office — myself 
least  of  all ;  but  there  was  no  justification  for  ignoring  great 
commercial  organizers  like  Barrow,  Trentley,  Justman  and 
half  a  dozen  more — men  whose  ability  had  been  proved  time 
and  again — and  farming  out  under-secretaryships  to  fash- 
ionable barristers  like  Turkinson  or  scions  of  great 
houses  like  Cheely-Wickham.  One  of  the  first  groups 
I  distinguished  was  that  of  the  middle-aged  successful  busi- 


192  SONIA 

ness  men  for  whom  no  use  could  be  found  save  as  units  in 
a  division. 

Another  and  a  sadder  was  the  largest  in  the  House — the 
stalwarts,  the  'sound  party  men.'  Under  present  conditions 
no  Government  could  live  without  them ;  they  know  it,  and 
in  that  knowledge  find  two-thirds  of  their  reward.  The  re- 
mainder comes  by  way  of  knighthoods — after  a  year  or  two 
of  power  it  was  impossible  to  walk  through  the  lobby  without 
being  jostled  by  knights — occasionally  by  a  Privy  Councillor- 
ship  and  always  by  a  sense  of  personal  importance.  How 
they  loved  to  repeat  what  the  Prime  Minister  had  said  to 
them — man  to  man!  How  infallible  was  the  Liberal  Minis- 
try, whatever  its  inconsistencies!  How  treacherous  their  op- 
ponents !  The  Liberal  rank  and  filer,  I  suppose,  is  no  more 
stupid  than  his  counterpart  on  the  other  side,  but  he  is  as 
depressing  in  conversation  as  might  be  expected  of  a  man 
unoriginal  in  thought  and  uncritical  in  mind,  whose  supreme 
function  is  vehemently  to  propagate  the  imperfectly  grasped 
ideas  of  others.  I  require  no  more  loyal  supporter  than  the 
Right  Honourable  Harry  Marshall-James  or  the  hundred  men 
who  are  Marshall-James  in  everything  but  name;  but  I  am 
not  likely  to  find  a  man  more  pompous  of  manner  and  mediocre 
of  mind. 

And  he  is  one  of  inimitably  many,  for  the  Ministry  dis- 
couraged ability  outside  the  Treasury  Bench,  finding  distant 
appointments  for  the  men  it  could  not  swallow  at  home. 
"No  Army,"  as  Jellaby,  one  of  the  Junior  Whips,  told  me, 
"can  be  composed  entirely  of  field-marshals."  In  his  place  I 
should  have  said  the  same  thing :  undoubtedly  the  same  thought 
was  felt,  if  never  expressed,  in  the  Nationalist  party,  so  alien 
in  spirit  that  I  never  knew  the  half  of  its  members'  names. 

"I've  sat  opposite  or  alongside  them  many  years,"  said 
my  uncle  reflectively.  "I've  seen  the  hair  of  so  many  of 
them  turn  gradually  whiter.  Some  of  them  are  elderly  men, 
George;  if  Home  Rule  doesn't  come  in  their  time  .  .  .  And 
there  are  still  people  who  call  them  paid  agitators ;  the  Sinn 
Fein  party  still  pretends  they're  prolonging  the  agony  in  order 
to  keep  their  job.  Ye  gods!  how  sick  of  it  all  they  must 


SONIA  DAINTON  193 

be !  There  are  men  on  those  benches — barristers  and  writers 
— who  could  have  made  the  world  their  own.  What  d'you 
suppose  they  wouldn't  give  now  to  have  their  youth  back — 
and  their  youth's  opportunities?  You  may  live  to  see  the 
tragedy  repeated  with  Labour." 

He  pointed  with  his  finger  to  a  group  of  three  men  high 
up  on  a  back  bench — Dillworth,  Champion  and  Tomlin.  I 
had  heard  the  first  two  in  the  debate  on  the  Address,  and  the 
last  I  was  to  hear  many  times  before  I  left  the  House.  They 
represented  the  Socialist  State,  and  for  passion,  logic  and 
incorruptibility  ran  the  Nationalists  close.  As  the  Session 
aged,  nine-tenths  of  the  new  members  were  unconsciously 
affected  by  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  House;  compromise 
dulled  the  fine  edge  of  our  convictions,  our  constant  close 
proximity  to  the  Opposition  mellowed  our  spirit;  and  a  rec- 
ognition of  personal  traits,  the  utterance  of  feeble,  obscure, 
friendly  jokes  induced  the  belief  that  our  worst  enemy  was 
fool  rather  than  knave.  The  intransigeant  Socialists  kept  their 
souls  untainted  by  compromise ;  for  them  there  was  no  deal- 
ing with  Liberal  or  Conservative,  and,  when  Tomlin  spoke 
on  Labour  questions,  you  could  imagine  a  Socialist  foot-rule 
in  his  hand  by  which  every  reform  was  to  be  measured. 

I  disapprove  the  Socialist  State  he  expounded,  I  dispute 
his  premises  and  charge  him  with  possessing  the  same  ex- 
cessive logic  which  led  primitive  ascetics  to  inch-by-inch 
suicide  or  drove  doctrinaires  of  the  French  Revolution  to  de- 
stroy church  spires  in  the  interests  of  Republican  equality. 
But  I  admire  his  passion  of  soul  and  intensity  of  vision ;  I  rec- 
ognize that  his  group  of  idealogues  at  least  appreciated  that 
the  perfect  State  presupposes  an  all-embracing  social  phil- 
osophy. 

There  are  few  more  moving  sights  than  a  preacher  without 
a  congregation,  or  with  one  that  is  incapable  of  understanding. 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi  won  warmer  response  from  his  birds  than 
Campion  or  Dillworth  from  the  1906  Parliament.  Their  audi- 
ence numbered  too  many  barristers,  and  the  Bar  has  never 
been  famous  for  its  imagination  or  sympathy.  Socialism, 
as  offered  by  Campion  and  accepted  by,  say,  Robert  Plumer, 


i94  SONIA 

K.C.,  suggested  the  form  that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
might  assume  in  the  hands  of  an  efficient  parliamentary 
draughtsman.  The  Socialists  were  not  slow  to  appraise  their 
critics,  and  I  sometimes  think  a  great  part  of  the  later  in- 
dustrial troubles  rose  from  a  belief  that  laws  and  agreements 
were  framed  by  skilled  hair-splitters  for  the  confusion  of 
trusting  manual  workers. 

The  belief  was  fostered  by  the  Press  and  a  generous  use 
of  the  "lawyer-politician"  catchword.  I  have  never  been 
associated  with  the  law,  but  I  had  opportunities  of  studying 
my  legal  colleagues  in  bulk,  and  a  sillier  phrase  never  obsessed 
the  mind  of  a  considerable  people.  Granted  that  the  Bar 
was  of  arid,  unimaginative  temper,  granted  that  it  invaded 
the  House  for  what  the  House  could  give  it,  may  not  the  same 
charge  be  brought  against  seven-tenths  of  the  non-legal  mem- 
bers? And  pressmen  and  barristers  alone  seem  to  enjoy 
the  faculty  of  assimilating  huge  masses  of  strange  matter  in 
short  time. 

The  Bar  in  Parliament  appeared  at  its  worst,  not  in  the 
Chamber  but  in  the  Smoking-Room.  I  remember  my  uncle 
taking  me  aside  after  my  election  and  counselling  me  as 
though  I  were  a  younger  brother  going  to  school  for  the  first 
time.  I  was  to  sit  tight  until  I  had  learned  the  procedure  of 
the  House,  and  after  that — well,  any  man  of  average  intelli- 
gence who  wore  out  his  patience  and  his  trousers  for  ten  years 
would  be  in  the  Ministry  at  the  end.  I  was  to  put  parliament 
before  everything  else  and  shed  any  idea  that  I  could  write 
novels  between  divisions,  or  contribute  to  the  Press,  or  live 
with  one  foot  in  the  House  and  the  other  in  Mayfair.  I 
was  to  cultivate  the  personal  touch  and  read  Ronsard  for  the 
pleasure  of  quoting  him  to  Mr.  Windham.  But  first  and  last 
and  all  the  while  I  was  to  avoid  the  Smoking-Room. 

"It's  the  grave  of  young  reputations,  George,"  he  told 
me  one  day  when  we  were  seated  there  in  a  corner  consecrated 
immemorially  to  his  private  use.  "You  sit  and  talk  about 
what  you're  going  to  do,  you  discuss  your  neighbours, — this 
comes  well  from  me,  I  know,  but  I'm  an  old  sinner  with  a 
•wasted  life,  and  you're  still  a  boy, — you  shuffle  jobs  and  ap- 


SONIA  DAINTON 

pointments  everlastingly,  and  in  the  meantime  Ministers  never 
see  you,  you  learn  nothing  and  you're  always  a  day  late  for 
your  opportunities.  Remember  that  there's  never  any  warn- 
ing in  the  House,  George.  You'll  get  a  dozen  chances  of 
winning  your  spurs,  but  only  by  sitting,  sitting,  sitting  in 
your  place  when  other  people  have  gone  away  to  dinner. 
Leave  the  Smoking- Room  alone,  my  boy." 

So  for  one  session  I  followed  his  advice.  After  two 
hours  in  the  "grave  of  young  reputations"  I  returned  to  my 
corner  seat,  leaving  a  knot  of  barristers  to  cast  lots  for  the 
vacant  Harleyridge  recordership,  leaving  my  uncle,  too,  to 
watch  the  great  movement  of  men.  My  sense  of  duty  was  so 
shortlived  that  I  may  be  pardoned  for  dwelling  on  it  and 
saying  that  the  Smoking-Room  is  the  most  interesting  place 
in  the  House.  A  year  or  two  later,  when  I  appreciated  the 
wonderful  mandarinesque  inaccessibility  of  the  Cabinet  and 
saw  how  little  the  private  member  was  wanted  anywhere  but 
in  the  division  lobbies,  I  hurried  away  to  places  where  at  the 
least  a  man  could  smoke  and  talk. 

The  change  was  not  ennobling  but  it  gave  infinitely  more 
varied  food  for  thought.  I  watched  the  social  levelling-up 
of  Radicalism  and  saw  stern,  unbending  Nonconformists 
honoured  and  decorated  for  all  the  world  like  Tory  sup- 
porters of  the  Establishment.  At  one  time  Baxter- Whitting- 
ham,  looking  strangely  like  a  famished  undertaker  in  his  loose, 
half-clerical  clothes,  had  criticized  the  Government  as  per- 
sistently as  Campion  or  Dillworth ;  his  mind  stored  with  the 
memory  of  working-class  conditions  in  Shadwell,  his  voice 
throbbing  with  indignation  and  pity,  he  had  arraigned  a 
Ministry  that  wasted  days  on  the  Address  and  hours  on  the 
obsolete  circumlocutions  of  "Honourable  and  gallant  mem- 
bers," "Mr.  Speaker,  I  venture  to  say — and  'I  do  not  think 
the  most  captious  critic  will  contradict  me  .  .  .,"  while  men 
starved  and  women  trod  the  path  of  shame,  while  little 
children  went  barefoot  and  verminous. 

The  silent  fortitude  of  the  Treasury  Bench  under  his  at- 
tacks was  a  thing  to  mark  and  remember.  "It  amuses  him 
and  doesn't  hurt  us,"  said  my  friend  Jellaby,  the  Whip.  "So 


196  SONIA 

long  as  he  votes  ..."  And  Baxter-Whittingham  never 
divided  the  House  against  the  Government.  Once  when  the 
Feeding  of  School  Children  Bill  was  in  Committee  he  became 
dangerous :  the  Treasury  Bench  was  deserted,  and  he  lavished 
fine  irony  on  the  Ministerial  passion  for  reform.  Free-lances 
and  others  who  had  entrusted  their  social  consciences  to  Whit- 
tingham,  or  were  nettled  by  the  intolerable  aloofness  of  Min- 
isters, followed  in  the  same  strain,  and  an  excited  Whip 
drove  me  out  of  the  tea-room  and  bade  me  hold  myself  in 
readiness  for  trouble. 

The  following  day  the  smoking-room  presented  a  strange 
appearance.  Seven  members  of  the  Cabinet  and  four  lesser 
Ministers  mingled  with  the  common  herd — like  naughty  school- 
boys propitiating  a  ruffled  master.  They  cracked  jokes  and 
slapped  us  on  the  back,  bade  us  take  pot-luck  with  them, 
and  asked  how  things  were  looking  in  our  constituencies.  I 
lunched  with  a  Secretary  of  State  that  day  and,  to  redress 
the  balance,  kept  my  promise  to  dine  with  Sir  Gerald  Matley, 
the  Wesleyan  potter  and  Liberal  knight.  We  were  given  a 
wonderful  dinner,  starting  with  caviar  and  ending  with  cigars 
like  office-rulers,  which  we  were  urged  to  pocket,  six  at  a 
time,  to  smoke  on  the  way  home.  Flushed  and  rebellious, 
Philip  drunk  swore  to  move  the  adjournment  unless  he  got 
a  promise  of  warmer  support  for  the  School  Children  Bill. 
Philip  sober  was  a  shade  less  valiant.  Matley  and  I,  alone  of 
that  heroic  cave,  kept  to  our  undertaking,  and  our  fellow- 
braves  avoided  the  House  for  a  couple  of  days.  The  Treasury 
Bench  smiled  a  little  contemptuously  as  we  proceeded  to  the 
Orders  of  the  Day,  but  the  lesson  was  not  entirely  thrown 
away.  When  the  Minimum  Wage  Appeal  Board  was  set  up, 
Baxter-Whittingham  (and  who  more  fit?)  was  appointed 
Controller  at  a  salary  of  £1250  a  year,  and  Shad  well  and  the 
House  of  Commons  knew  him  no  more. 

"Parliament  before  everything  else,"  my  uncle  had  said. 
With  debates  and  committees,  dinners  and  intrigues,  great 
Liberal  receptions  and  levees,  I  had  time  for  nothing  else.  No 
schoolboy  counted  the  days  to  the  end  of  term  more  eagerly 
than  I  did  as  we  came  in  sight  of  August. 


SONIA  DAINTON  197 


ii 


As  the  session  drew  to  a  close  I  gave  a  dinner-party  at 
the  House  to  the  Lorings,  Daintons,  Farwells  and  one  or  two 
more.  Truth  to  tell,  I  gave  many  dinners  in  the  early  days 
when  it  was  still  a  pleasure  to  leap  up  between  courses  for 
a  division.  I  almost  liked  to  be  called  away  from  the  "Ec- 
lectic" by  an  urgent  telephone  summons,  and  the  joy  of  being 
saluted  by  the  police  in  Palace  Yard,  or  asked  whether  any- 
thing was  happening  in  the  House,  died  hard.  I  was  six-and- 
twenty  at  the  time,  and  it  amused  me  to  be  buttonholed  by 
the  inveterate  log-rollers  of  the  Lobby  or  pumped  by  pressmen 
as  I  emerged  from  a  secret  meeting  of  intrigue  in  one  of  the 
Committee  Rooms. 

Loring  had  dined  informally  with  me  on  many  occasions 
' — to  examine  the  personnel  of  the  Liberal  party,  he  said,  and 
classify  those  members  who  had  stood  for  a  bet  or  to  improve 
their  practice  or  acquire  copy  for  their  next  novel.  He  be- 
came an  assiduous  attendant  in  the  House  of  Lords  as  soon 
as  we  had  any  measures  to  send  there,  but  in  the  early  days  he 
lived  a  butterfly  life,  and  one  of  the  conditions  of  my  invita- 
tions was  that  he  should  give  me  news  of  that  old  world  from 
which  I  was  now  cut  off.  Roger  Dainton  had  lost  his  seat 
in  the  great  landslide,  and  I  had  seen  nothing  of  the  family 
since  the  previous  autumn.  He  was  one  of  many,  and  so  much 
had  my  uncle  filled  me  with  vicarious  enthusiasm  for  political 
life,  that  I  refused  an  invitation  to  Crowley  Court  in  order 
to  enter  for  th^ Parliamentary  Golf  Handicap,  wherein  Robert 
Plumer  defeated  me  in  the  first  round  in  comfortable  time  to 
return  and  argue  a  case  before  the  Privy  Council,  while  I 
dawdled  on  in  contemplation  of  a  game  I  dislike  playing  and 
loathe  watching. 

My  dinner  opened  promisingly,  as  Lady  Dainton  was  recog- 
nized by  two  Ministers  on  the  way  to  the  Harcourt  Room  and 


198  SONIA 

by  a  third  as  we  took  our  seats.  Summertown,  I  recollect, 
was  in  disgrace,  as  he  had  the  previous  week  bade  lasting 
farewell  to  his  College  in  consequence  of  riding  a  motor- 
bicycle  round  the  Quad,  and  half-way  up  the  staircase  of  one 
of  the  Censors  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  after  the  Bulling- 
don  Ball.  He  had,  however,  won  a  pair  of  gloves  from  Sonia 
for  his  trouble.  I  contrived  to  separate  him  from  his  mother, 
and  he  underwent  no  worse  punishment  than  hearing  his  future 
discussed  at  the  top  of  three  penetrating  voices.  Lady 
Marlyn  assumed  the  world  to  be  as  deaf  as  herself,  and  I  could 
see  poor  Sally  Farwell  blushing  as  her  mother  pierced  and 
overcame  the  murmur  of  the  surrounding  tables.  "A  regular 
good-for-nothing  scamp,  Mr.  Oakleigh.  I  want  to  send  him 
abroad,  but  I  wouldn't  trust  him  alone.  Do  you  think  your 
nice  friend  Mr.  O'Rane  would  care  about  the  responsibility 
again?  You  know  there  was  dreadful  trouble  with  Jack 
over  an  Italian  girl  in  New  York." 

I  hastened  to  assure  her  that  O'Rane  would  greedily 
accept  the  offer.  I  would  myself  have  thrown  up  my  seat  and 
escorted  Summertown  round  the  world  in  person  rather  than 
have  his  indiscretions  with  the  Italian  girl  shouted  through  the 
echoing  dining-room. 

"Has  anyone  seen  anything  of  O'Rane  ?"  I  asked  Sonia  in 
the  course  of  dinner. 

"He  was  at  Commem.,"  she  answered.  "Sam  made  up  a 
party  with  Lord  Summertown  and  David  and  a  few  more." 

"It  must  have  been  quite  like  old  times,"  I  said,  recalling 
Sonia's  first  and  my  last  appearance  at  a  Commemoration  Ball. 

"We  fought  like  cats,"  she  replied.    "Tony  Crabtree " 

"You  didn't  tell  me  he  was  of  the  party,"  I  interrupted. 
Possibly  there  was  more  in  my  tone  than  in  the  words  used. 

"Why  not?"  Sonia  asked,  her  big  brown  eyes  filled  with 
simple  wonder.  "You  surely  aren't  still  thinking  of  that 
absurd  affair  in  Scotland?" 

"What  absurd  affair?"  I  asked. 

"You  know  perfectly  well  what  I  mean." 

"I  didn't  know  it  was  a  matter  of  public  discussion,"  I 


SONIA  DAINTON  199 

"But  it  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  might  have  happened 
to  anyone,"  she  protested.  "Of  course  at  first  ..."  Her 
little  white  shoulders  raised  themselves  almost  imperceptibly. 
"But  we've  been  meeting  on  and  off  all  the  season ;  we  couldn't 
stand  and  glare,  and  it  was  much  easier  to  be  friends.  We 
soon  made  it  up,  and  he's  been  to  stay  with  us  in  Hampshire. 
Well,  I  got  Sam  to  take  him  up  for  Commem.,  and  David  must 
needs  fight  with  him  about  something.  /  didn't  mind,  I'm  not 
Tony's  keeper,  but  David  was  so  full  of  righteous  indignation 
that  I  found  him  very  dull.  There  was  a  sort  of  'it-hurts-me- 
more-than-it-does-you'  reproachful  look  about  him,  so  that  in 
desperation  I  just  asked  him  if  he  didn't  love  me  any  more." 

"You're  utterly  soulless,  Sonia,"  I  observed,  by  way  of 
gratifying  her. 

Her  eyes  shone  with  mischievous  delight. 

"His  very  words!  Men  are  wonderfully  unoriginal.  I 
just  leant  forward  and  kissed  him  on  his  eyelids — it's  all 
right !"  she  exclaimed ;  "he  insists  that  we're  morally  engaged 
— and  whenever  I  do  that  he  simply  crumples  up.  It's  rude  to 
look  quite  so  surprised,  George." 

"And  yet  your  people  are  quite  respectable,"  I  said  thpught- 
fully. 

She  shook  her  head  and  sighed. 

"You've  become  dreadfully  proper  and  old-fashioned, 
George,"  she  told  me,  "since  you  got  into  this  musty  old 
House.  You're  almost  as  bad  as  David,  without  the  excuse 
of  caring  a  snap  of  the  fingers  for  me.  He  lectured  me  and 
lectured  me,  but  when  it  was  over  he  wanted  to  dash  away 
and  spend  his  life  in  a  moorland  cottage  with  me,  sins  and  all." 

"That  temptation,  at  least,  you  had  the  fortitude  to  re- 
sist," I  said. 

She  wrinkled  her  nose  and  pouted.  "Me  no  likee.  There 
are  such  millions  of  things  I  simply  can't  do  without,  and 
David  can't  give  them  me,  and  if  he  could  he  wouldn't.  He 
is  so  serious,  poor  lamb!  And  it's  always  about  the  wrong 
things.  After  all,  George,  what  does  matter  in  life?  It's 
frightfully  serious  to  be  ugly,  or  grow  old,  or  not  to  know 
how  to  dress — I'm  all  right  there  at  present,  and  perhaps  I 


200  SONIA 

shan't  mind  when  the  time  comes  and  I  get  all  skinny  and 
lined.  It'll  be  frightfully  serious  if  Lady  Knightrider  doesn't 
ask  me  up  for  the  Northern  Meeting,  or  if  Daddy  doesn't 
raise  my  allowance — I  told  you  I  was  broke,  didn't  I  ?  Well, 

I  am.  In  the  meantime "  She  broke  off  and  hummed 

two  bars  of  a  waltz.  "Life  is  good,  George." 

"We  were  discussing  Raney,"  I  reminded  her. 

"Were  we?    I'd  forgotten  about  him." 

"It  is  an  old  habit  of  yours.  What  part  does  he  play  in 
your  tragedy?" 

"Tragedy?"  she  echoed,  not  altogether  displeased  at  the 
choice  of  word. 

"It'll  be  a  tragedy  before  you've  played  it  out,"  I  told  her. 

She  was  quite  thoughtful  for  a  moment  or  two,  and  when 
she  spoke  again  I  could  see  her  discretion  obviously  declining 
a  challenge  that  her  curiosity  longed  to  take  up. 

"David's  perfectly  free  to  do  whatever  he  likes,"  she  an- 
swered, a  shade  combatively.  "I'm  not  going  to  decide  any- 
thing for  the  present;  life's  far  too  much  fun,  and  we've 
got  all  eternity  before  us.  He's  in  no  hurry  either." 

"I  thought  he  was  in  treaty  for  that  moorland  cottage," 
I  said. 

"Oh,  that  was  merely  a  passing  brain-storm.  I  told  him 
the  life  I  was  leading,  and  he  thought  it  over  and  decided  to 
let  me  have  my  fling — so  considerate  of  him ! — and  when  I'm 
tired  of  vanities,  if  neither  of  us  has  found  anyone  better  and 
either  of  us  has  got  any  money,  via  tout !" 

With  an  exquisite  wave  of  her  hand  she  dismissed  the 
subject  and  invited  me  to  admire  her  dress,  which  was  more 
transparent  than  most  but  otherwise  not  remarkable. 

"Why  don't  you  both  have  the  honesty  to  admit  you've 
made  a  mistake?"  I  asked. 

"It  amuses  him,"  said  Sonia  tolerantly. 

"And  you?" 

She  gazed  across  the  room  with  her  head  on  one  side. 

"And  you,  Sonia?"  I  repeated. 

"I'll  tell  you  some  day,"  she  promised,  and  with  that  tha 
subject  finally  dropped. 


SONIA  DAINTON  201 

I  wrote  that  day  to  Oxford — knowing  no  other  address — 
to  ask  O'Rane  to  stay  with  me  in  Ireland.  After  consider- 
able delay  and  the  dispatch  of  a  reply-paid  telegram  I  received 
an  answer  dated  from  Melton. 

"Mv  DEAR  GEORGE,"  it  ran — and  I  preserve  it  as  the  only 
letter  I  ever  received  from  the  world's  worst  correspondent 
-"many  thanks.  Delighted  to  come.  Villiers  has  gone  under 
temporarily  with  rheumatic  fever,  contracted  by  sitting  on 
wet  grass  to  watch  his  house  being  defeated  in  the  Champion- 
ship ;  I  am  knocking  the  Under  Sixth  into  shape  in  his  absence. 
I  have  achieved  considerable  popularity  with  the  boys,  and 
Burgess  would  like  to  keep  me  in  perpetuity.  It's  not  bad 
fun.  Some  of  the  kids  who  fagged  for  me  in  Matheson's  are 
now  grown  men,  about  five  times  the  size  of  me.  As  I  haven't 
got  a  degree  yet,  of  course  I'm  not  entitled  to  wear  a  gown, 
and  the  lads  despise  me  accordingly.  Burgess,  seen  at  close 
quarters  as  a  colleague,  is  even  greater  than  I  thought.  I 
have  gathered  from  him  and  the  common-room  some  hideous 
stories  of  you  and  Jim.  Blackmail  will  be  the  prop  of  my 
declining  years. — Ever  yours, 

"D.  O'R." 

I  had  received  a  conditional  promise  from  the  Daintons, 
and  to  complete  my  party  I  invited  the  Lorings.  Amy  ac- 
cepted, and  Jim  refused.  Looking  back  at  this  time  I  re- 
member that  it  was  not  easy  to  frame  an  invitation  that  he 
would  not  refuse.  It  was  a  weariness  going  to  other  people's 
houses,  he  told  me,  eating  strange  food,  not  being  master 
of  his  own  time.  Assuming  that  I  wanted  to  see  him,  why 
didn't  I  come  to  House  of  Steynes?  Smilingly  but  resolutely 
he  declined  to  come. 

Where  his  personal  comfort  was  concerned  Loring  could 
be  wonderfully  unadaptable.  "I  waste  a  fair  portion  of  my 
life  in  the  House,"  he  used  to  argue.  "Do  let  me  enjoy 
the  rest  of  the  time  in  my  own  way."  His  mother  and  sister 
caught  the  refrain  and  abetted  him.  Indeed,  a  legend  grew 
up  that  he  was  the  hardest-worked  member  of  either  House 


202  SONIA 

and  could  therefore  claim  indulgences  in  the  off  hours  when 
he  was  not  struggling  heroically  against  the  latest  Radical 
machination. 

The  old  controversies  are  dead,  but  Loring's  theory  of 
the  House  of  Lords  is  of  hardier  growth.  Posing  as  the 
reader  of  Democracy's  secret  thoughts,  he  would  leave  House 
of  Steynes  amid  rows  of  bowing  flunkeys,  motor  to  the  sta- 
tion, where  the  stationmaster  hastened  to  be  obsequious,  and 
step  into  his  reserved  carriage.  With  a  great  deal  of  bowing 
and  smiling  the  guard  would  lock  the  door  that  his  lordship 
might  be  undisturbed  till  he  reached  London.  And  at  Euston 
a  chauffeur  and  footman  would  meet  him.  "Yes,  my  lord"; 
"No,  my  lord" ;  "Very  good,  my  lord."  It  would  take  another 
four  men  adequately  to  open  the  great  doors  of  Loring  House, 
but  in  time,  and  with  more  assistance  where  needed,  he  would 
be  driven  down  to  Westminster,  there  to  display  the  knowledge 
of  social  conditions  and  public  opinion  acquired  in  his  journey- 
ings  abroad. 

So  it  was  when  the  planets  were  yet  young,  so  it  will  be 
when  the  earth  grows  cold,  though  the  man  who  fled  discom- 
fited from  Shadwell  after  ten  days  should  perhaps  refrain 
from  criticism. 

In  what  most  men  count  the  great  things  of  life,  Loring 
never  abused  his  position;  in  the  small,  he  became  frankly 
unclubbable.  I  had  known  him  long  enough  to  laugh  at  the 
old-maidish  fixed  order  of  incompatibilities  that  he  mistook 
for  a  well-regulated  life.  It  was  very  conservative,  very  un- 
adaptable, and  he  had  an  unanswerable  reason  for  every- 
thing. You  dined  with  him  at  the  Elysee  because  Armand 
had  the  finest  hand  in  London  for  a  homard  an  tartare — the 
practice  and  the  tribute  continued  for  years  after  the  great 
chef  had  bought  himself  an  hotel  in  Boston  and  bade  fare- 
well to  London.  You  dined  at  eight-fifteen  because — well, 
because  Loring  always  dined  at  eight-fifteen,  and  food  at  any 
other  hour  was  supper  or  a  meat  tea.  You  hurried  your 
dinner  so  as  not  to  miss  the  star  turn  at  the  "Round  House," 
which  was  timed  for  nine-twenty-five,  and,  when  you  had 
seen  that,  you  had  to  leave — because  Loring  always  left  at 


SONIA  DAINTON  203 

that  point,  in  turn  because  there  was  never  anything  worth 
seeing  after  ten.  You  then  sat  for  half  an  hour — a  dread- 
fully uncomfortable  half-hour — at  Hale's,  where  smoking 
was  not  allowed  ( few  men  smoked  in  1630  when  Martin  Hale 
opened  his  tavern  in  Piccadilly  at  the  fringe  of  "the  town")  : 
it  would  never  have  done,  he  would  assure  you,  to  arrive  at 
your  next  destination  before  eleven ;  equally  no  man  on  earth 
could  wish  to  stay  later  than  two  a.m. 

It  was  impossible  to  wean  him  from  his  little  rules,  and 
the  world  must  follow  his  lead — or  live  elsewhere.  (Which 
course  was  adopted,  he  hardly  cared.)  I  fought  to  preserve 
my  prejudices  against  his — and  he  beat  me.  At  ten-ten  I 
was  left  in  my  stall  at  the  "Round  House,"  and  he  was  half- 
way to  Hale's.  And  when  he  decided  that  he  could  not  and 
would  not  meet  women  at  breakfast,  I  scarcely  hoped  he 
would  make  an  exception  in  favour  of  Lake  House.  If  my 
mother  and  Beryl  persisted  in  breakfasting  with  their  guests 
— I  can  see  the  very  shrug  of  his  shoulders  as  though  he  had 
put  his  objections  into  words — it  was  really,  really  simpler 
for  me  to  meet  him  in  Scotland  where  there  would  be  no 
hideous  domestic  surprises  in  store  for  anyone. 

So  my  autumn  party  in  1906  brought  me  Amy  but  not 
her  brother.  "Tell  George  I  hope  you're  all  missing  me," 
he  wrote  to  her.  I  hastened  to  assure  him  that  with  my 
uncle,  O'Rane,  the  Daintons,  the  Hunter-Oakleighs  from 
Dublin  and  four  or  five  more,  his  absence  had  not  been  re- 
marked. 

in 

I  always  doubted  the  wisdom  of  including  O'Rane  in  a 
house-party,  for  the  Lake  House  estate  offered  little  but  its 
snipe-shooting,  and  he  refused  to  shoot.  There  was,  however, 
a  library,  a  garden,  some  purple,  green,  brown  and  grey 
mountain  scenery  and — for  anyone  who  cared  to  do  so — 
the  mountains  themselves  to  climb.  For  the  most  part  he 
paced  up  and  down  the  terrace  at  the  margin  of  the  lake, 
gazing  dreamily  over  its  mirror-like  surface  to  the  tree-clad 
hills  on  the  other  side.  In  the  past  twelve  months  he  had  lost 


204  SONIA 

much  of  his  animation  and  had  become  curiously  rapt  and 
reflective.  The  change  did  not  make  him  an  easier  guest  to 
entertain.  We  have  known  each  other  these  many  years 
now  and  stayed  together  in  a  dozen  different  houses,  yet  I 
never  quite  get  rid  of  the  feeling  that  he  is  from  another 
world  and  another  century.  Sometimes  one  or  other  of  us 
would  keep  him  corporeal  company  for  a  while:  usually  he 
was  alone — thinking  out  the  future.  In  the  last  days  of 
July  he  had  taken  his  First  in  Greats,  and  academic  Oxford 
lay  at  his  feet. 

"What's  the  next  stage,  Raney?"  I  asked  him  one  evening 
when  we  were  alone  in  the  garden.  "All  Souls?" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders,  linked  arms  with  me  and  paced 
the  lowest  terrace  by  the  lake's  border.  It  was  a  night  of 
rare  stillness,  and  the  moon  was  reflected  full  and  unwavering 
in  the  black  water:  behind  us,  fifty  yards  up  the  side  of  the 
mountain,  blinding  squares  of  yellow  light  broke  up  the  dark 
face  of  the  house;  a  chord  was  struck,  and  a  girl's  voice 
began  to  sing  with  an  Irish  intonation. 

"  "What  a  lovely  place  the  world  would  be  if  it  weren't 
for  the  men  and  women  in  it !"  he  exclaimed. 

"Even  with  them  it's  tolerable,"  I  said. 

I  was  deliciously  tired  after  a  long  day's  tramp;  a  hot 
bath,  dinner  and  the  placid  night  set  me  at  peace  with  all  men. 

"For  you,  yes,"  he  answered  reflectively. 

"And  for  a  number  of  others,"  I  said. 

The  voice  above  me  grew  low  and  died  away.  Someone 
began  to  play  an  air  from  "La  Boheme." 

"For  anybody  without  imagination,"  he  murmured. 
"You've  been  in  the  House  for  nearly  a  year  now,  George ; 
d'you  think  the  world's  a  happier  place  ?" 

"I'm  afraid  there's  no  such  thing  as  statutory  happiness, 
Raney." 

A  vision  of  Baxter- Whittingham  floated  before  my  eyes, 
and  an  echo  of  his  phrases  came  back  to  my  ears.  O'Rane 
picked  up  a  handful  of  gravel,  seated  himself  on  the  parapet 
of  the  terrace  and  began  tossing  stones  into  the  lake. 

"I'm  looking   for  inspiration,   George,"  he   said,  after  a 


SONIA  DAINTON  205 

pause.  "Just  now  I'm  at  a  loose  end.  I've  been  through  Mel- 
ton and  the  House,  I've  seen  about  a  dozen  different  kinds  of 
working-class  life,  and  before  I  came  to  England  I  took  part 
in  the  great  primitive  struggle  for  existence.  Now,  if  I  like, 
I  suppose  I  can  get  a  fellowship,  go  into  one  of  the  professions, 
lead  a  comfortable  life.  .  .  ."  His  voice  rose  a  tone  and 
quickened  into  excitement.  "George,  it  won't  do.  We  pre- 
tend the  world's  civilized,  and  yet  every  now  and  again  some 
murderous  war  breaks  out.  We've  been  drinking  champagne 
up  there,  and  there  are  people  dying  of  starvation.  There  are 
people  dying  of  cancer  and  phthisis — and  we  haven't  stopped  it. 
There  are  young  girls  being  turned  into  harlots  hourly. 
Hunger,  disease,  death  and  the  loss  of  a  soul's  purity.  It 
won't  do."  He  sighed,  and  a  shadow  of  despair  came  over  his 
dark  eyes.  "I  talked  to  Jim  Loring  in  the  same  strain  a  few 
weeks  ago ;  he's  waiting  for  the  world  to  come  back  to  a  be- 
lief in  God.  Poor  old  Jim  hasn't  learned  much  mediaeval  his- 
tory !  I  talked  to  your  uncle  yesterday :  he's  a  social  Darwinian 
— these  scourges  are  all  divinely  appointed  to  keep  us  from 
getting  degenerate.  I  talked  to  you  this  morning,  and  you 
virtually  told  me  five  years  of  Liberal  Government  would  set  it 
all  right.  They  won't!  It  isn't  the  law  that's  wrong,  it's  the 
soul  of  man.  You've  had  workhouses  for  two-thirds  of  a 
century,  and  people  still  starve.  In  half  a  dozen  years  we've 
seen  war  in  South  Africa  and  Manchuria.  Men  still  seduce 
women;  there's  cruelty  to  children  and  animals  that  would 
make  you  sick  if  you  heard  a  thousandth  part  of  it;  there  are 
blind,  hare-lipped  babies  being  born  to  parents  of  tainted 
blood.  ...  It  won't  do,  George." 

I  seated  myself  on  the  parapet  beside  him  and  lit  a 
cigarette. 

"Will  you  tell  me  the  remedy,  Raney?"  I  asked. 

He  looked  at  me  for  a  moment  before  answering. 

"Would  you  act  upon  it  if  I  did?" 

"I'd  like  to  hear  it  first,"  I  said. 

"To  see  how  much  it  inconveniences  you."  He  laughed, 
and  there  was  a  bitterness  in  the  smile  on  his  thin  lips  that 
told  forth  his  utter  scorn  of  soul  for  the  makeshift,  worldly 


206  SONIA 

materialism  for  which  I  stood  in  his  eyes.  "It'll  inconvenience 
us  the  devil  of  a  lot,  but  that's  what  we're  here  for.  We're 
supposed  to  have  been  educated.  We've  got  to  give  a  lead. 
The  first  duty  of  society  is  to  make  existence  possible,  the 
second  is  to  make  a  decent  thing  of  life.  Gradually  we're 
getting  the  first,  but  we're  not  in  sight  of  the  second."  He 
looked  out  over  the  black,  unmoving  water  and  shook  his  head 
sadly.  "We've  got  no  social  conscience,  we've  got  no  imagina- 
tion to  give  us  one.  Look  here,  you'd  think  me  a  pretty  fair 
swine  if  I  took  Sonia  away  for  a  week  to  an  hotel,  said  good- 
bye at  the  end  of  it  and  packed  her  home?" 

"It's  not  done,"  I  admitted. 

His  clenched  fist  beat  excitedly  on  the  flat  stone  balustrade. 

"Tom  Dainton's  got  a  flat  in  Chelsea  and  a  woman  living 
with  him.  Is  that  done  ?" 

"I  don't  do  it  myself,"  I  said.  His  information  was  not 
new  to  me :  I  had  even  met  the  girl,  once  when  she  was  living 
with  Tom,  once  with»his  predecessor.  f 

"God  in  heaven!  She's  somebody's  daughter,  somebody's 
sister  probably ;  there  was  a  time  when  she  was  clean-mind- 
ed ...  and  that  brute-beast  salves  his  conscience  by  telling 
himself  that  somebody  else  corrupted  her  before  he  came  along ! 
I  told  him  exactly  what  I  thought  of  him." 

I  had  a  fair  idea  of  O'Rane's  capacity  for  invective. 

His  lips  curled  till  his  teeth  gleamed  white  in  the  moon- 
light. 

"Do  you  still  meet?"  I  inquired. 

"I'd  cut  him  in  his  own  house!  It  isn't  that  I  set  great 
store  by  marriage,  I'm  not  in  a  position  to  do  that.  If  he 
wants  to  be  ultra-modern,  let  him  live  with  her  by  all  means 
— and  introduce  her  to  his  people.  He'd  kill  a  man  who  treat- 
ed his  own  sister  like  that.  .  .  .  Imagination !  Imagination ! 
That's  the  basis  of  the  social  conscience,  George.  If  Beryl 
had  consumption,  you'd  sell  the  shirt  off  your  back  to  heal  her. 
You'd  do  pretty  well  as  much  for  a  sister  of  mine.  You'd 
write  a  check  for  a  hundred  pounds  if  I  recommended  a  hard 
case  to  you.  And  because  you  don't  hear,  because  you  don't 
see  the  poor  devils  lying  under  your  eyes  .  .  ." 


SONIA  DAINTON  207 

"Where's  the  damned  thing  to  stop,  Raney?  There  are 
people  starving  the  world  over." 

"Thank  God  you  recognize  it !  It  hurts  as  much  to  starve 
in  the  Punjab  as  under  the  windows  of  Lake  House." 

"But  I'm  not  interested  in  people  I've  never  seen,"  I  said, 
lighting  another  cigarette. 

"You'd  jump  overboard  to  save  a  drowning  man  without 
waiting  to  be  introduced.  Human  life's  sacred,  George:  the 
value  we  attach  to  it  is  the  one  test  of  civilization  I  know." 

"But  how  does  one  start?  Take  my  own  case  and  be  as 
pointed  as  you  like.  An  Irish  landowner,  Liberal  member  of 
Parliament,  comfortable  means,  unmarried,  without  any  par- 
ticular desire  to  leave  the  world  worse  than  I  found  it — what 
am  I  to  do?  Frankly,  Raney,  I've  not  got  the  temperament 
to  turn  vegetarian  or  go  about  in  sandals.  I'm  part  of  a  very 
conventional,  stupid,  artificial  world;  all  my  relations  and 
friends  are  in  the  same  galley.  My  soul's  taken  root.  What 
am  I  to  do?" 

He  picked  up  a  second  handful  of  gravel  and  jerked  the 
stones  thoughtfully  into  the  shining  water. 

"D'you  remember  the  boys  in  ^sop  who  did  what  I'm 
doing — flinging  stones  into  a  lake?  It  was  all  in  fun,  but 
they  hit  a  frog,  and  the  frog  told  them  what  was  fun  for 
them  was  death  for  him.  If  you  want  an  everyday  test,  you 
can  ask  yourself  over  every  act  you  do  or  refrain  from  doing 
whether  you're  causing  pain  to  a  living  creature — by  word, 
deed,  thought.  That's  the  only  standard  worth  having,  and  if 
everyone  adopted  it  ...  As  they  will  some  day ;  we're  grow- 
ing slightly  more  humane.  .  .  ." 

We  had  had  a  record  bag  that  day:  I  was  in  good  form 
and  Bertrand  could  not  miss  a  bird.  I  mentioned  this  to 
O'Rane  to  recall  him  to  our  limitation. 

"A  hundred  years  ago  you'd  have  watched  two  hapless 
cocks  slashing  each  other  to  death,"  he  retorted.  "People 
were  flogged  within  an  inch  of  their  lives.  Witch-hunts  were 
hardly  out  of  fashion.  Two  thousand  years  ago  malefactors 
were  nailed  to  wooden  crosses  and  left  to  die,  gladiators  were 
set  to  fight  wild  beasts.  ..."  His  voice  trembled  with  ex- 


208  SONIA 

ultant,  fierce  irony,  and  his  dark  eyes  blazed  in  the  setting  of 
his  white  face.  "Now  we're  grown  so  effete  that  we  almost 
shudder  when  some  upstanding  son  of  Belgium  takes  a  rhinoce- 
ros whip  and  lashes  a  Congo  native  till  the  smashed  ribs 
burst  through  his  flesh."  His  voice  fell  as  suddenly  as  it  had 
risen.  "Have  you  ever  set  eyes  on  a  new-born  babe?  It's  a 
wonderful  thing,  so  tiny  and  so  perfect,  with  its  little  limbs 
and  organs  and  the  marvellous  little  nails  on  its  toes  and 
fingers.  ...  I  think  of  that  beautiful,  soft,  warm,  living  crea- 
ture cherished  and  fed  to  manhood,  and  then  flung  to  the 
demons  for  them  to  torture.  I  see  it  torn  in  pieces  by  a  shell 
or  eaten  up  by  disease.  And  in  the  old  days  we  might  have 
seen  it  stretched  on  a  rack,  or  broken  joint  by  joint  with  the 
wheel  and  boot.  .  .  ."  The  sentence  died  away  in  a  long  shud- 
der that  shook  his  whole  body.  "Come  back  to  the  house, 
George,"  he  cried,  jumping  down  from  the  parapet.  "I've 
travelled  three  thousand  miles  in  the  last  five  seconds,  all  the 
way  to  Greece  and  back,  where  the  Turks  used  to  put  hot 
irons  on  the  chests  of  their  prisoners  just  to  teach  them  not  to 
be  rebels.  Ten  years  ago !  Who  says  this  is  not  the  best  of  all 
possible  worlds?" 

I  took  his  arm  and  walked  up  the  stone  steps  that  joined 
the  three  terraces.  There  was  still  a  light  in  the  drawing-room, 
and  we  found  Sonia  writing  letters  and  smoking  a  cigarette. 
The  accomplishment  was  new  and  precarious.  She  started  as 
we  came  in  through  the  window  and  hastily  closed  the  blotting- 
book. 

"Oh,  it's  only  you!"  she  exclaimed  with  relief  as  she  saw 
us.  "I  was  simply  dying  for  a  cig.,  and  I  can't  smoke  in  my 
room,  or  mother  would  smell  it  through  the  door."  She 
opened  the  blotter  and  extracted  a  rather  battered  cigarette 
"I've  been  writing  to  a  friend  of  yours,  David,"  she  went  on 
teasingly.  "Mr.  Anthony  Crabtree." 

"De  gustibus  non  est  disputandum,"  O'Rane  answered 
with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders. 

"You  must  translate,  please." 

"It  amuses  you  and  it  doesn't  hurt  him,"  I  suggested. 

"Who?    David?"    She  walked  over  to  O'Rane's  chair  and 


SONIA  DAINTON  209 

sat  down  on  the  arm  of  it,  bending  over  him  and  running  her 
fingers  through  his  fine,  black  hair.  So  Delilah  may  have 
wooed  Samson  to  slumber,  with  the  same  practised  touch,  the 
same  absence  of  amateurishness  or  spontaneity.  "I'm  very 
fond  of  Tony." 

O'Rane  looked  at  her  with  half -closed  eyes. 

"How  old  are  you,  Sonia  ?"  he  asked. 

"I  think  you  ought  to  remember.  Twenty.  And  I'm  never 
going  to  be  any  more." 

"It's  not  so  very  old,"  he  said  reflectively. 

"It'll  be  horrid  to  be  twenty-one,"  she  answered,  with  a 
pout.  "I  shall  have  to  pay  my  own  bills — and  I'm  frightfully 
in  debt.  It's  such  fun,  too,  to  be  quite  irresponsible.  Of 
course  you  were  born  old,  David;  if  I  lived  to  be  a  hundred  I 
should  never  catch  you  up." 

"Twenty,"  he  repeated.  "No,  it's  not  so  very  old.  In 
five  years'  time " 

"My  dear,  I  shall  be  a  quarter  of  a  century  old !"  she  ex- 
claimed. 

"You'll  be  tired  of  it  all  by  then." 

"I  shall  be  dead  or  married,"  she  answered  gloomily. 

"Not  married.  I  shall  come  to  you  then — you'll  have  out- 
grown your  present  phase  and  I  shall  be  a  rich  man.  I  shall 
come  to  you.  .  .  ."  He  broke  off  and  sat  looking  up  into  her 
eyes. 

Sonia  drew  back  her  hand  and  returned  his  gaze  steadily. 
A  smile  of  mockery  flickered  for  a  moment  round  her  lips. 

"And  then  ?"  she  demanded. 

"I  shall  ask  you  to  marry  me." 

"And  if  I  ...   ?"  she  began. 

He  sat  upright  and  caught  her  two  wrists  in  his  right  hand. 

"If  you  say  'no'?  You  won't;  you  can't!  You'll  want 
me  by  then,  want  someone  you  can  depend  on.  And,  if  you 
don't,  you'll  have  to  take  me  just  the  same.  You  won't  be 
able  to  say  'no.'  " 

His  voice  had  grown  low,  and  he  spoke  with  clear  de- 
liberation. I  once  watched  a  neurotic  woman  being  put  to 
sleep  by  a  hypnotist.  O'Rane's  low,  determined  tone  re- 


210  SONIA 

minded  me  of  the  doctor's  suggestive  insistence.  "Now  you 
are  going  to  sleep.  You  are,  oh!  so  tired.  Your  eyes  are 
so  heavy.  So  heavy !  So  sleepy !  .  .  ."  Her  voice  in  answer- 
ing dropped  to  the  same  key. 

"You  think  anyone  could  make  me  obey  him?  Try  it, 
friend  David !" 

"Five  years  will  make  a  difference.  I  haven't  given  many 
orders,  Sonia,  but  they've  always  been  obeyed.  I  haven't  done 
very  much — yet,  but  I've  never  failed  to  do  what  I  wanted." 
Sonia  tried  to  be  defiant,  but  her  eyes  suddenly  fell,  and  she 
slipped  down  from  the  arm  of  the  chair  and  moved  towards 
the  door. 

"Ah !  you're  an  infant  prodigy,"  she  observed  jauntily.  "I 
must  go  to  bed,  though." 

"Sonia,  come  back  here !" 

O'Rane  had  not  raised  his  voice,  but  Sonia  paused  in  her 
passage  across  the  room.  In  her  place  I  should  have  done  the 
same. 

"What  do  you  want  ?"  she  asked  uneasily. 

"Come  back  here." 

Like  a  child  being  taught  its  first  lesson  in  obedience,  she 
hesitated,  moved  forward,  paused  and  came  on. 

"What  d'you  want?"  she  repeated,  drumming  her  fingers 
nervously  on  the  arm  of  the  chair. 

O'Rane  smiled. 

"You  may  go  to  bed  now,"  he  answered. 

With  sudden  petulance  she  stamped  her  foot. 

"David,  if  you  think  it's  funny  to  try  and  make  a  fool  of 
me  .  .  .  !  You're  perfectly  odious  to-night."  I  was  moving 
forward  to  intervene  as  peacemaker,  and  Sonia  seized  the 
opportunity  to  shake  me  by  the  hand  and  wish  me  good-night. 

"You  needn't  pay  overmuch  attention  to  Raney,"  I  said. 

"Oh,  I  don't,"  she  answered  airily,  but  her  hand  as  it 
touched  mine  was  curiously  cold. 

O'Rane  walked  over  to  the  writing-table  and  returned  with 
her  letter. 

"Now  you  see,"  he  remarked  enigmatically  as  he  gave  it 
her. 


SONIADAINTON  211 

"See  what?" 

"It  doesn't  make  me  jealous  to  be  told  you're  very  fond 
of  Crabtree,"  he  answered.  "Good  night,  Sonia." 

I  closed  the  door  behind  her,  poured  out  two  whiskies  and 
sodas  and  filled  a  pipe. 

"You're  extraordinarily  infantile,  Raney,"  I  said. 

"It  was  as  well  she  should  know." 

"Mind  you  don't  drive  her  into  his  arms,"  I  said.  "Next 
time  she  may  accept  him." 

"Next  time?" 

For  the  moment  I  had  forgotten  that  O'Rane  had  not 
been  present  at  Crabtree's  discomfiture  the  previous  autumn 
at  House  of  Steynes.  When  I  remembered  I  wished  I  had 
not  introduced  the  subject. 

"Oh !  this  is  getting  beyond  a  joke !"  he  exclaimed,  when 
I  had  given  him  the  irreducible  minimum  of  information. 
"I've  a  good  mind  to  drop  a  hint  to  Lady  Dainton." 

"My  dear  fellow,  the  intimacy  is  recognized  and  approved 
by  her.  You  can't  tell  her  anything  she  doesn't  know." 

He  picked  up  his  tumbler  and  sipped  thoughtfully. 

"I  could  tell  her  a  number  of  things,"  he  returned  after  a 
pause.  "How  Crabtree  pumped  me  to  find  out  what  they  were 
worth,  whether  Crowley  was  their  own  property  and  so  forth. 
As  cousin  to  an  undischarged  bankrupt  he  conceives  himself  to 
be  conferring  a  favour  on  a  family  he  once  described  in  my 
hearing  to  Beaumorris  as  'very  decent  middle-class  people.' 
Fair  spoil,  in  other  words,  for  my  Lord  Beaumorris  and  his 
family.  It  would  be  very  salutary  for  Lady  Dainton  to  hear 
that." 

"It  will  hardly  increase  your  present  inconsiderable  popu- 
larity," I  suggested. 

He  finished  his  drink  and  walked  with  me  to  the  door. 

"There's  no  harm  in  telling  Sonia  he's  a  cad,"  he  insisted. 

"If  she  cares  for  him,  it  won't  shake  her:  if  she  doesn't, 
it'll  make  her  very  angry.  I  wish  to  God  I  hadn't  told  you, 
Raney.  Promise  me  at  least  that  you  won't  choose  my  house 
to  do  it  in !" 

"Oh,  the  whole  thing  may  be  a  mare's  nest,"  he  answered 


212  SONIA 

easily.  "I  shan't  act  till  I've  something  to  act  on.  Have  you 
been  invited  to  Crowley  Court  this  autumn?" 

"I've  been  told  to  fix  my  own  time,"  I  replied. 

"They've  got  a  party  on  in  November.  I  was  thinking  of 
going  then  if  I'm  not  bear-leading  Summertown  round  the 
world.  Why  shouldn't  we  go  together?  Brother  Crabtree 
may  be  there  with  any  luck." 

"Brother  Crabtree  is  sure  to  be  there,"  I  answered,  as  I 
lighted  him  to  his  room  and  turned  back  to  my  own. 


IV 


Five  days  later  my  guests  were  scattered  to  the  four  winds. 
Bertrand  stayed  behind  until  it  was  time  to  move  on  to  the 
Hunter-Oakleighs  in  Dublin,  and  O'Rane  was  waiting  to  ac- 
company me  to  House  of  Steynes.  A  great  quiet  descended  on 
Lake  House,  and  I  recalled  Valentine  Arden's  maxim  that  the 
charm  of  a  house  party  lies  in  the  moment  of  its  dispersal. 

"You're  not  being  quite  so  strenuous  as  usual,  David,"  ob- 
served my  uncle  one  morning  after  breakfast. 

"I  can't  hurry  the  calendar,  sir,"  Raney  answered.  "I 
must  wait  for  November." 

"All  Souls?"!  asked. 

He  nodded.  "And  then  the  Bar.    And  then  the  House." 

The  1906  Parliament  was  distinguished  by  a  little  group 
of  men  who  had  cleared  the  board  of  honours  at  Oxford, 
blazed  into  fame  at  the  Bar  and  entered  the  House  as  fashion- 
able silks  and  rising  politicians  while  still  in  the  thirties.  Their 
reputation  preceded  them  from  the  time  they  were  freshmen, 
and  their  career  became  the  model  for  succeeding  generations. 
I  imagine  that  Simon,  Hemmerde,  and  F.  E.  Smith  were  to 
the  Oxford  of  their  day  what  O'Rane  was  to  the  Oxford  of 
mine — marked  men  with  no  conceivable  limit  to  the  heights 
they  might  attain. 

"You  think  it's  possible  to  reform  the  world  from  the 
House  of  Commons?"  I  asked. 


SONIA  DAINTON  213 

O'Rane  looked  through  the  open  window  over  the  placid 
lake  to  the  smoke-blue  mountains  beyond. 

"You  can  only  reform  the  world  by  reforming  the  men 
who  compose  it,"  he  answered.  "And  you  can't  do  that 
by  Acts  of  Parliament.  You've  not  found  that  out  yet,  George. 
I  have." 

"Then  why  are  we  to  be  honoured?"  Bertrand  inquired. 

Raney  turned  round  and  faced  into  the  room. 

"There  are  some  things  the  House  alone  can  do,  sir.  With- 
in the  next  ten  years  you're  going  to  have  labour  troubles  as 
near  revolution  as  makes  no  odds.  I've  spied  out  the  land, 
and  there's  an  ugly  temper  abroad.  And  probably  you'll  have 
a  European  War.  We're  too  rich,  sir." 

"There  will  be  labour  troubles  every  ten  years,"  Bertrand 
answered  with  a  yawn.  "The  young  men  who've  never  starved 
their  way  through  a  strike  have  to  learn  what  their  fathers 
learned." 

"We're  too  rich  internationally,"  O'Rane  persisted.  "We've 
got  all  the  fair  places  of  the  earth,  and  the  sansculottes  of 
Europe  will  fight  us  for  them,  just  as  the  sansculottes  of  Eng- 
land will  fight  for  a  bigger  share  of  profits." 

My  uncle  shook  his  head. 

"The  world's  getting  too  democratic,  David,"  he  said. 
"Democracy  doesn't  fight  democracy ;  no  one  has  anything  to 
gain.  And  we  leave  the  fair  places  of  the  world  open  to  the 
world.  Anyone  can  come  too." 

He  picked  up  his  hat  and  walked  through  the  window  into 
the  morning  sunshine.  O'Rane  looked  for  a  moment  at  the 
broad-shouldered  back  and  massive  head,  then  turned  to  me 
with  a  gesture  of  despair. 

"When  I  get  into  the  House,  George,"  he  said,  "it'll  be  to 
fight  your  uncle.  Years  ago — the  night  after  I  left  Melton — 
I  told  you  in  the  garden  at  Crowley  Court  that  we  had  given 
away  our  weakness  before  all  Europe.  There  are  not  ten  men 
in  this  country  who  understand  Continental  opinion.  I  called 
for  ten  years'  reorganization  of  the  Empire.  Now  it  seems 
that  every  step  we  take  to  defend  ourselves  against  attack 


2i4  SONIA 

makes  Germany  think  we're  preparing  to  attack  her.  Sooner 
or  later  there'll  be  a  casus  belli." 

"Half  a  dozen  years  ago  we  were  faced  with  an  inevitable 
war  with  France,"  I  reminded  him.  "Now  we're  the  best  of 
friends." 

"There's  been  no  Pan-French  school  since  Sedan,"  he  re- 
torted. "I  should  be  sorry  to  see  England  going  down  before 
the  storm.  With  all  its  blemishes  I  think  the  civilization  of 
this  country  is  the  finest  in  all  the  world."  He  stood  opposite 
the  window  with  the  autumn  sun  shining  on  to  his  thin  face, 
and  as  I  looked  there  were  tears  in  his  great  black  eyes.  "Any 
country,"  he  went  on  tremulously,  "that  takes  a  steward  from 
a  Three-Funnel  Liner  and  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  and  .  .  ." 

His  voice  died  away.  I  knocked  out  my  pipe  and  began 
filling  it  again. 

"Come  out  into  the  garden,  Raney,"  I  said,  taking  his  arm. 

He  laughed  and  obeyed. 

"Burgess,  too,  used  to  say  I  wasn't  accountable  for  my 
actions,"  he  remarked. 

"A  little  of  your  madness  would  make  better  men  of  a 
number  of  us,"  I  said. 

He  stopped  short  to  drink  in  all  the  misty  damp  beauty 
of  the  autumn  morning,  momentarily  forgetful  of  me  and  of 
our  conversation.  Another  moment  and  the  mood  was  past. 

"Oh!  it's  made,  not  born,"  he  said.  "If  you'd  seen  Jews 
massacred  before  you  were  seven.  .  .  .  Poor  dear  Lady  Dain- 
ton  can't  think  what  my  father  was  about  over  my  upbringing ! 
She's  quite  right.  I  learned  all  the  wrong  things,  met  all  the 
wrong  people — and  this  is  the  result !" 

At  the  end  of  the  week  we  crossed  to  Scotland  together, 
spent  ten  days  with  the  Lorings  and  separated  in  Edinburgh. 
Towards  the  middle  of  October  we  met  again  in  London,  and, 
as  I  was  now  qualified  to  take  my  M.A.,  I  seized  the  excuse 
for  a  visit  to  Oxford  and  motored  O'Rane  up  in  time  for  the 
first  All  Souls  paper.  There  was  an  interval  between  the 
written  work  and  the  candidates'  dinner,  so  we  arranged  to 
slip  down  for  eight-and-forty  hours  to  Crowley  Court.  "You 
will  find  some  old  friends  here,"  Lady  Dainton  wrote.  "Lord 


SONIA  DAINTON 

Loring,  Mr.  Arden  and  Lord  Summertown  are  coming  to- 
morrow, and  Tony  Crabtree  is  already  with  us.  .  .  ." 

"I  told  you  so,"  I  remarked  to  O'Rane  as  we  left  Princes 
Gardens  and  climbed  into  the  car. 

"I  shouldn't  be  at  all  surprised  if  we  had  to  dislodge  the 
fellow,"  he  answered,  as  a  man  might  speak  of  installing  a 
new  drainage  system. 

There  was  a  curious  similarity  of  purpose  in  our  descent 
on  Oxford.  Each  had  a  rather  wearisome  formality  to  go 
through,  and  the  result  in  either  case  was  equally  certain. 
Candidates  for  the  degree  of  M.A.  paid  fees  to  their  college 
and  the  university  chest,  caught  a  hurried  Latin  formula, 
changed  their  gowns,  tipped  their  scouts,  bowed  to  the  Vice- 
Chancellor  and  got  rid  of.  a  red  and  black  silk  hood  at  the 
earliest  possible  opportunity.  Candidates  for  All  Souls  Fel- 
lowships presented  their  credentials  to  the  Warden,  disposed  of 
a  stated  number  of  papers  in  the  Hall  and  paraded  their  table 
manners  at  dinner  and  in  Common  Room  the  following  Sun- 
day. The  formality  ended  with  an  announcement  in  "The 
Times,"  and  anyone  who  had  not  sufficiently  cleared  his 
friends'  houses  of  undesirable  guests  was  now  at  liberty  to 
return  and  complete  the  eviction. 

I  took  my  M.A.  as  other  and  better  men  have  taken  it 
before  and  since. 

Also  like  other  men  before  and  since,  O'Rane  was — not 
elected.  It  was  the  first  time  I  had  known  him  fail  to  carry 
out  an  undertaking  he  had  set  himself,  and  my  faith  in  him 
would  have  received  a  shock  unless  I  had  heard  the  full  story. 
All  he  said  as  we  got  into  the  car  at  the  "Randolph"  was : 

"I  probably  shan't  go  through  with  this  show." 

"Why  the  devil  not?"  I  demanded. 

At  first  he  made  no  answer,  but,  as  we  slid  away  from  the 
lights  of  Oxford  and  headed  through  Abingdon  and  the  wet 
white  mist  of  a  November  afternoon  southward  to  the  Berk- 
shire Downs,  he  offered  fragments  of  explanation.  There 
were  two  fellowships  and  sixteen  candidates,  of  whom  three 
stood  head  and  shoulders  above  their  rivals:  O'Rane  with 
first  in  Mods,  and  Greats,  the  Ireland  and  Gaisford  prizes 


216  SONIA 

and  a  Chancellor's  medal ;  Oldham  of  Balliol  with  a  second  in 
Mods.,  a  first  in  Greats  and  a  first  in  Law ;  and  Brent  of  the 
House  who  had  taken  Pass  Mods.,  a  first  in  History  and  the 
Stanhope  Essay  prize.  There  was  prima  facie  a  lion  with  no 
martyr. 

"I  walked  down  the  High  with  old  Brent,"  O'Rane  told  me. 
"He  was  rather  down  on  his  luck — man  who's  lived  on  scholar- 
ships since  he  could  walk,  not  a  bob  in  the  world,  and  no 
guts  to  make  a  career  for  himself.  With  a  fellowship  he  can 
go  to  the  Bar ;  otherwise  he'll  moulder  in  the  Civil  Service." 

"But,  my  dear  Raney,"  I  exclaimed,  "the  decision  doesn't 
rest  with  you." 

"No,  but — I  can  do  something  for  him,"  he  said  with  a 
smile.  "You  know  my  philosophy." 

"Yes,  but  what  about  yourself?"  I  asked. 
"In  the  words  of  Burgess,  'The  Lord  will  provide.'    I've 
made  twenty-three  pounds  in  ten  days  as  a  waiter  in  this  coun- 
try ;  in  a  Long  Island  Delicatessen  store " 

"Are  you  going  back  there  ?" 

"If  need  be.  I've  settled  nothing — not  even  about  this 
fellowship.  I'm  waiting  for  an  omen,  George.  A  lot  depends 
on  the  next  few  hours;  I  must  think  things  out.  What  are 
you  pulling  up  for?" 

"My  near-side  head  light's  gone  out,"  I  answered,  as  I 
scrambled  past  him  into  the  road. 

On  my  return  O'Rane  was  standing  with  one  foot  braced 
against  the  steering-wheel  and  the  other  planted  on  the  back 
of  the  driving-seat ;  he  was  gazing  intently  down  the  road  we 
had  just  traversed.  There  was  nothing  coming  up  behind; 
he  stood  for  a  moment  more  in  silence  and  then  slipped  back 
into  his  seat. 

"It's  too  misty,"  he  said,  with  the  suggestion  of  a  sigh  in 
his  voice. 

"What  were  you  looking  at  ?"  I  asked. 

"I  was  trying  to  see  Oxford.    The  lights  of  Oxford.    D'you 

remember  'Jude  the  Obscure'  ?    It  was  here — any  height  round 

here — that  he  stood  gazing  at  Oxford  and  wondering  if  he'd 

ever  get  there.    God !    Don't  I  know  that  man's  heart !    Ever 


SONIA  DAINTON  217 

since  I  was  a  tiny  child.  .  .  .  And  I  remember  my  father,  just 
when  he  was  dying, — it  was  almost  the  last  word  on  his  lips — 
telling  me  where  to  go  and  what  I  was  to  do.  .  .  ." 

He  paused  abruptly  and  turned  over  old  thoughts. 

"Go  on,  Raney,"  I  said. 

"Hallo !    Were  you  listening  ?    I  was  only  rambling." 

"Go  on  rambling  then — about  your  father." 

He  turned  up  the  collar  of  his  coat  and  sank  lower  into  his 
seat. 

"It  was  just  the  end ;  they  carried  him  up  from  the  Peiraus, 
and  he  rallied  for  one  last  flicker.  Tm  going  now,  Boy,'  he 
whispered — smiling,  though  two-thirds  of  him  were  shot  away. 
'I've  not  made  much  of  a  thing  of  life ;  see  if  you  can  do  bet- 
ter. We've  not  a  bad  record  as  a  family.  Go  back  to  England 
— Oxford.'  He  started  coughing,  and  when  it  was  over  I 
thought  he  was  dead.  Suddenly  he  sat  up  and  spoke  very 
quickly.  'I'm  really  going  now,  Davie.  Good-bye,  Boy.  Try 
to  forgive  me !'  "  Raney's  voice  had  grown  very  husky.  "For- 
give him !  The  man  was  a  god !  Besides,  I  didn't  understand 
till  people  started  calling  me  Lord  O'Rane,  and  then  I  went  to 
a  priest  to  find  out.  It  was  like  rubbing  in  father's  death.  .  .  . 
And  the  priest  explained — a  bit,  and  said  I  should  understand 
when  I  was  older.  And  that  was  all — all  I  care  to  tell  you, 
anyway,  old  man.  I  didn't  enjoy  my  first  trip  round  the  world. 
Perhaps  if  Summertown's  invitation  still  holds  good.  .  .  ." 

He  broke  off  and  began  to  whistle  reflectively  between 
his  teeth. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do,  Raney  ?" 

"Why  bother  ?  I've  got  five  years  to  turn  round  in  before 
Sonia's  ready  for  me " 

"When  you  do  marry  her,  I  shall  give  you  a  very  handsome 
present — I  don't  like  betting  on  these  things." 

"I  shall  marry  her,  George,"  he  answered,  with  assurance, 
"I've  got  five  years  to  make  money  in — here  or  abroad — a 
thousand  a  year " 

"In  five  years  ?" 

"Less.  Three.  Two.  If  I  don't  make  it  in  two,  working 
twelve  hours  a  day,  I'll  make  it  in  three,  working  eighteen." 


2i  8  SONIA 

"I  rather  doubt " 

It  was  the  one  word  that  lashed  him  like  a  whip.  His 
hand  descended  on  my  driving  arm  and  gripped  it  till  the  car 
rocked  from  side  to  side. 

"If — I — ever — doubted — anything 1"  he  whispered. 

"Let  go  my  arm !"  I  cried. 

"Sorry !"  He  laughed  and  went  back  to  his  normal  tone. 
"Dear  old  George!  If  I'd  ever  doubted,  d'you  think  I  could 
have  stood  going  round  with  a  guitar  in  Chinatown — hand- 
ing basins  on  a  liner.  .  .  .  Doubt !" 

An  hour  later  we  turned  in  through  the  drive  gates  of 
Crowley  Court. 


As  I  slowed  down  opposite  the  door,  it  occurred  to  me  to 
ask  whether  O'Rane  had  made  his  peace  with  Tom  Dainton. 

"No.  And  never  shall,"  he  grunted.  "Fortunately  he's 
not  here,  though.  If  he  were ' 

The  sentence  was  cut  short  as  the  doors  were  flung  open, 
and  Crabtree,  gorgeous  in  white  waistcoat  and  pink  carnation, 
advanced  into  the  white  glare  of  the  headlights.  . 

"Stout  fellows!"  he  cried  heartily.  "Haven't  seen  you 
for  ages,  Raney " 

"How  do  you  do,  Crabtree?"  O'Rane  responded,  in  a 
tone  that  would  have  chilled  a  blast  furnace. 

"Come  along  in !  Never  mind  about  the  car,  George ;  one 
of  the  men'll  take  it  round.  How  are  the  lads  of  Oxenford, 
what?  How's  the  House?  How's  everything?" 

The  questions  were  so  clearly  rhetorical  that  I  attempted 
no  answer.  Sir  Roger  came  in  sight,  crossing  the  hall,  and 
I  hurried  in  to  shake  hands  with  him,  reflecting  that  full  two- 
thirds  of  my  antagonism  to  Crabtree  arose  from  his  inveterate 
use  of  my  Christian  name. 

"The  ladies  have  gone  up  to  dress,  George,"  said  Dainton. 
"We  shall  find  everyone  else  in  the  billiard-room.  If  you'd 
care  for  a  drink " 

He  hurried  on  ahead,  hardly  giving  me  time  to  shed  my 


SONIA  DAINTON  219 

coat  and  cap,  for  all  the  world  like  a  trusted  old  family  ser- 
vant making  me  at  home  in  his  master's  absence.  The  im- 
pression was  not  altogether  a  capricious  fancy:  I  remember 
a  ball  at  Crowley  Court  where  the  stately  wife  of  a  newly 
honoured  manufacturing  chemist  whispered  loudly  to  her  host, 
"Sir  Zachary  and  Lady  Smithe.  Smithe,  my  man,  not  Smith, 
mind." 

In  the  billiard-room  we  found  Loring  and  Summertown 
perfunctorily  practising  fancy  cannons,  while  Valentine 
Arden  ostentatiously  slumbered  at  full  length  on  a  divan. 
Tea  was  long  past,  dinner  some  way  ahead;  and,  as  Arden 
complained,  he  hadn't  tasted  a  cocktail  since  leaving  London. 

"You  may  not  know  it,  Raney,"  yawned  Loring  as  Sir 
Roger  closed  the  door  behind  us  and  hurried  away  to  order 
whisky  and  soda,  "but  you've  saved  my  life.  Another  ten 
minutes  of  Crabtree!  It  only  shows  the  folly  of  staying  in 
other  people's  houses.  With  the  best  intentions  in  the  world 
they  spring  disquieting  surprises  on  you.  Really,  after  a 
certain  episode  not  a  thousand  miles  from — shall  we  say? — 
House  of  Steynes  last  autumn,  I  thought  I  should  be  safe  in 
coming  here.  The  rising  generation  beats  me,  and  as  for 
poor  Valentine " 

Arden  roused  at  sound  of  his  own  name. 

"They  offered  one  curried  lobster  for  breakfast,"  he  pro- 
claimed, tremulous  with  indignation ;  "there  were  only  two 
kinds  of  chutney,  and  no  Bombay  duck.  One  cannot  eat  curry 
without  Bombay  duck."  i 

He  relapsed  into  exhausted  slumber,  and  Summertown 
seized  upon  O'Rane. 

"Look  here,  young  fellow,  my  lad,"  he  said,  "I'm  properly 
in  the  soup.  You  remember  the  bilge  my  lady  mother's  been 
talking  about  my  seeing  more  of  the  world  ..." 

Arden  stirred  in  his  sleep  and  opened  one  eye. 

"The  desire  of  a  mother  that  her  son  shall  see  rather  more 
of  the  world,"  he  observed,  "not  infrequently  coincides  with 
an  ambition  to  see  rather  less  of  her  son." 

Summertown  quelled  the  interruption  at  the  end  of  a  half- 
butt  and  continued  to  state  his  case. 


220  SONIA 

"Well,  when  you  seemed  doubtful  about  coming,  Crabtree 
butted  in.  He'd  heard  all  ex's  were  to  be  paid.  I  shall  be 
dans  le  consomme,  as  the  French  say,  if  you  cry  off." 

O'Rane,  who  appeared  to  be  tired  and  subdued,  promised 
to  think  over  the  proposal. 

"When  do  your  rotten  results  come  out?"  persisted  Sum- 
mertown.  "Time's  getting  on,  you  know.  I  want  to  be  back 
in  town  by  next  season." 

"I'll  let  you  know  to-night,"  said  O'Rane,  crossing  the 
room  and  making  a  seat  for  himself  at  the  end  of  Arden's 
divan. 

I  guessed  then — what  I  afterwards  found  out  for  certain — 
that  he  was  beginning  to  repent  of  his  recent  quixotism. 
The  big,  warm,  comfortable  house  threw  into  striking  relief 
the  shanties  and  bleak  skies  that  were  likely  to  be  his  home 
and  shelter  for  some  years  to  come. 

"Well,  don't  be  a  dirty  dog,"  said  Summertown,  in  con- 
clusion. "If  I  get  stuck  with  Crabtree  .  .  .  Steady!" 

He  picked  up  his  cue  and  began  knocking  the  balls  about 
as  the  door  opened,  and  Crabtree  entered.  A  moment  or  two 
passed  before  we  could  try  a  fresh  cast  in  conversation,  and 
it  is  more  than  probable  that  the  newcomer  guessed  we  had 
been  discussing  him. 

"Aren't  you  lads  going  to  dress?"  he  inquired,  as  he 
straightened  his  tie  before  a  mirror  and  glanced  at  his  watch. 

"Presently,  presently,"  answered  Loring,  who  was  in  fact 
already  on  his  feet  and  only  delayed  with  the  perversity  of  a 
man  who  dislikes  being  ordered  about.  "You  coming  up, 
Valentine?  There's  only  just  time,  if  you're  going  to  have  a 
bath." 

"One  is  going  to  be  very  late,"  said  Arden  sleepily.  "It 
may  cut  dinner  a  bit  short.  One  is  bored  with  dinner.  One 
hates  having  to  talk  when  one  is  eating;  and,  if  one  doesn't 
talk,  other  people  will.  One  is  bored  with  other  people." 

"Have  a  drink?"  said  Summertown  encouragingly,  as  he 
helped  himself  again.  "With  enough  alcohol  you  can  bear 
almost  anything.  I  can't  stand  playing  five-pence  a  hundred 
Auction,  but  I  did  last  night — thanks  to  the  tranquillizing  in- 


SONIA  DAINTON  221 

fluence  of  '47  port.  True,  I  cut  the  match-box  by  an  oversight, 
but  that  might  have  happened  to  anyone.  And  Lady  Dainton 
told  me  I  ought  to  wear  glasses.  Here  you  are,  Valentine. 
Three  times  a  day  before  meals  or  any  other  hour.  Even 
our  host  brightened  visibly  last  night.  Another  half  glass, 
and  there'd  have  been  horrible  revelations — second  establish- 
ment in  Brixton,  undiscovered  bank  fraud — I  think  to-night  I 
shall  move  round  by  him  and  keep  the  wine  circulating." 

"You  talk  too  much,  Summertown,"  said  O'Rane,  on  whom 
the  tone  of  the  conversation  was  grating. 

"So  will  old  Dainton !"  rejoined  Summertown  gleefully. 
"No,  you're  quite  right,  Raney.  Dam'  bad  form  to  tighten  a 
man  up  at  his  own  table,  specially  if  he's  got  a  weak  head. 
You  hear  that,  Crabtree  ?  Drink  fair  all  round  and  no  doping." 

"I'd  drink  two  to  one  against  Dainton,"  Crabtree  answered 
valiantly. 

"All  through?"  asked  Summertown,  not  without  a  certain 
admiration.  "Bet  you  a  pony  you  don't." 

"Done!  Jim  shall  hold  the  stakes,  George  umpire.  I 
remember  once  when  I  was  staying  with  my  cousin  Beau- 
morris " 

Loring  was  standing  with  his  back  to  the  fire,  yawning 
and  occasionally  reminding  Arden  that  it  was  time  to  dress. 
At  the  mention  of  his  name  he  strolled  into  the  light  and 
crossed  to  the  door,  only  pausing  to  remark : 

"It's  just  as  well  to  remember  whose  house  you're  in, 
Crabtree.  Time  to  dress,  Summertown."  And,  as  he  entered 
the  hall,  "Don't  drink  whisky  on  an  empty  stomach,  young 
man." 

Summertown,  whose  leading  characteristics  throughout  his 
short  life  were  a  cheerful  immaturity  and  chronic  instability 
of  temperament,  became  immediately  contrite.  His  rare  mo- 
ments of  seriousness  were  marked  by  a  pathetic  desire  to  stand 
well  in  Loring's  eyes. 

"Sorry,  sorry,  sorry!"  he  exclaimed.  "It  won't  happen 
again,  Loring.  I  swear  it  won't." 

Loring  laughed  and  caught  his  arm. 

O'Rane  and  I  were  the  last  to  leave  the  billiard-room, 


222 

and,  as  we  came  to  the  foot  of  the  staircase,  Sonia  appeared 
in  sight  on  the  landing  above.  For  the  moment  we  were  in- 
visible to  her,  and  she  pattered  lightly  down  the  stairs,  waving 
one  hand  to  Crabtree,  who  was  standing  astride  the  rug  in 
front  of  the  fire. 

"Hope  I  haven't  kept  you  waiting,  Tony  ?"  she  called  out. 

Crabtree  responded  with  some  decorous  conventionality, 
and  in  another  second  we  came  into  the  light  and  were  face 
to  face  with  Sonia. 

"Hallo,  children,  where  were  you  hiding?"  she  asked  as 
we  shook  hands.  "Have  they  elected  you  to  your  old  fellow- 
ship, David?" 

"I  haven't  finished  yet,"  he  answered.    "I  say,  Sonia  .  .  ." 

He  paused  and  looked  almost  anxiously  at  her.  The  fire- 
light glowing  across  the  hall  struck  sparks  of  gold  out  of 
her  brown  hair,  and  her  arms  and  shoulders  gleamed  white 
through  the  transparent,  blue  gauze  of  her  dress. 

"Say  on,  MacDavid,"  she  bade  him. 

"Summertown  wants  me  to  go  abroad  with  him.  I  don't 
know  whether  to  accept  or  not." 

"He  asked  me,  too."  Crabtree  called  out.  "I  wish  you'd 
make  up  your  great  mind,  Raney." 

O'Rane  kept  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  face  in  front  of  him. 

"Which  is  it  to  be,  Sonia  ?"  he  asked. 

"My  dear,  /  don't  care,"  she  answered.  "Of  course,  it'll 
be  more  amusing  for  Lord  Summertown  if  Tony  goes. 
There's  a  compliment  for  you,"  she  called  out,  blowing  a  kiss 
across  the  hall.  Crabtree  bowed  with  mock  gravity.  "You're 
getting  dreadfully  ponderous  in  your  old  age,  David.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  don't  believe  I  can  spare  Tony.  How  long  are 
you  going  to  be  away  ?" 

"Six  months  if  Crabtree  goes.  Three  to  five  years  if  I 
do.  It  won't  be  with  Summertown  the  whole  time ;  I  shall 
have  business  to  attend  to.  I  didn't  know  whether  you " 

Sonia  clasped  her  hands  with  a  dramatic  gesture  of  sur- 
prise. 

"My  dear!  you  are  humble  all  of  a  sudden !  I'm  honoured ! 
Have  /  any  wishes  .  .  .  ?  Dear  me !" 


SONIA  DAINTON  223 

"Then  I  may  take  it  you  haven't  ?" 

"It's  for  Lord  Summertown  to  say,"  she  answered  im- 
patiently. "7  don't  mind." 

O'Rane  nodded  and  began  to  walk  up  the  stairs,  while 
Sonia  crossed  the  hall  at  a  ragtime  shuffle,  humming  a  planta- 
tion song.  As  we.  reached  the  first  landing,  he  remarked : 

"I  told  you  I  was  looking  for  an  omen." 

Before  dressing  he  scribbled  a  note  to  Oxford,  and,  when 
we  met  in  the  drawing-room  before  dinner,  I  heard  him  tell 
Summertown  that  he  would  be  ready  to  start  by  the  end  of  the 
week. 

In  my  uncle's  phrase,  women  are  the  strangest  of  all  the 
sexes,  and  I  do  not  pretend  to  explain  Sonia's  frame  of  mind 
at  this  time.  Perhaps  O'Rane  was  right  in  thinking  she  must 
be  allowed  of  her  own  accord  to  grow  weary  of  the  world  that 
Crabtree  and  Summertown  represented;  perhaps  she  was 
piqued  by  his  refusal  to  run  errands  for  her;  perhaps  I  am 
right  in  thinking  she  was  at  this  time  incapable  of  any  deep 
emotion.  It  is  all  guesswork. 

Crabtree  took  charge  of  the  dinner  that  night  in  a  hearty, 
efficient  manner,  though  O'Rane  and  I  suffered  from  the 
disability  common  to  all  late  arrivals  in  a  house-party :  a  mint 
of  catchwords  and  private  jokes  had  been  coined  before  we 
came.  It  was  impossible  to  understand  without  an  explana- 
tion, and  the  explanation  so  often  analysed  the  poor 
little  jest  out  of  life.  Moreover,  I  was  sleepy  after  my  long 
drive,  and  the  elderly  girl  whom  I  took  in — I  always  suspected 
Sonia's  guests  of  being  selected  as  foils — persisted  in  dis- 
cussing the  higher  education  of  women.  As  Valentine  Arden 
observed  half-way  through  when  my  indefatigable  neighbour 
trained  her  batteries  on  him:  "If  a  woman  is  good-looking, 
education  is  superfluous;  if  she  is  not  it  is  inadequate."  I 
was  mortified  to  think  how  much  I  might  have  been  spared 
if  I  had  been  able  to  frame  that  formula  earlier  in  the  evening. 

When  the  ladies  left  us,  I  roused  slightly  with  the  effort  of 
getting  up  and  opening  the  door.  Crabtree  moved  into  the 
chair  between  Dainton  and  myself,  and,  leaning  in  front  of  us, 
whispered  to  Summertown : 


224  SONIA 

"I've  given  him  a  stroke  a  hole  all  the  way." 

For  a  moment  I  did  not  follow  the  allusion,  but,  when 
Summertown  shook  his  head  and  murmured  "No  takers," 
— still  more,  when  Crabtree  hurriedly  finished  his  second  glass 
of  port  and  reached  for  the  decanter — I  appreciated  that  he 
was  seriously  measuring  hardness  of  head  with  his  host,  as 
he  had  backed  himself  to  do  before  dinner  in  the  billiard- 
room. 

"Don't  be  an  ass,  Crabtree,"  I  whispered,  as  he  filled  Dain- 
ton's  glass  for  the  third  time. 

A  humorous  wink  was  my  reward,  and  in  elaborate  dumb- 
show  he  informed  me  that,  while  his  host  had  drunk  no  more 
than  three  glasses  of  champagne  and  two  of  port  he  himself 
had  achieved  exactly  double  that  figure. 

"Just  getting  into  my  stride,"  he  murmured,  and,  if  I  find 
few  opportunities  of  praising  Crabtree,  let  me  do  justice  to 
his  powers  of  consuming  alcohol.  Certain  dining  clubs  of 
Oxford  used  to  experiment  on  him,  now  trying  to  make  an 
impression  by  sheer  weight  of  metal,  now  cunningly  seeking 
to  sap  his  defences  with  injudicious  mixtures.  For  all  the 
success  they  achieved,  the  bottles  might  have  been  carried 
into  the  street  and  emptied  down  the  nearest  drain.  The  big 
round  face  never  flushed,  the  sleek,  black  head  never  swam. 
Then,  as  now,  the  lustiest  of  his  opponents  dropped  out  of  the 
race  just  as  he  was  settling  down. 

At  first  no  one  else  observed  what  was  afoot.  Loring  and 
O'Rane  were  talking  together  at  the  other  end  of  the  room, 
and  Summertown  and  Arden  had  drawn  back  their  chairs  till 
they  were  screened  by  my  back.  I  alone  noticed  that  Dainton 
had  grown  very  silent,  and,  as  Crabtree  kept  up  a  voluble 
monologue,  every  one  else  was  free  to  listen  or  talk  as  he 
chose.  The  first  warning  came  with  a  tinkle  of  broken  glass 
and  a  deep  stain  on  the  cloth. 

"Clumsy  of  me!"  exclaimed  Dainton.  I  hope  I  didn't 
splash  you?  Extraordinarily  clumsy  of  me.  No;  no  more, 
thanks.  I  can't  think  how  I  came  to  be  so  clumsy."  Crabtree 
waved  away  the  protest  and  began  filling  a  fresh  glass.  "I 
don't  deserve  it  after  being  so  clumsy,  you  know." 


SONIA  DAINTON  225 

A  moment  later  coffee  was  brought  in,  and  I  saw  Dainton 
taking  several  matches  to  a  cigar  that  he  had  not  cut.  Faith- 
ful to  the  terms  of  his  wager,  Crabtree  achieved  a  successful 
right  and  left  with  the  liqueurs  and  brought  down  one  kummel 
as  the  tray  was  handed  me  and  another  as  it  reached  him. 
Also,  he  very  considerately  helped  his  host  to  a  glass. 

"Drop  it,  Crabtree,"  I  said,  as  the  footman  passed  out  of 
hearing.  "This  is  getting  beyond  a  joke." 

He  winked  even  more  humorously  than  before  and  pointed 
to  the  two  glasses  beside  his  plate.  I  saw  Loring  turn  and 
whisper  in  O'Rane's  ear,  their  eyes  were  fixed  for  a  moment 
on  Dainton's  face,  and  then  O'Rane  called  out : 

"Have  you  got  any  matches  down  there,  Crabtree?  Shy 
'em  over,  will  you  ?" 

A  heavy  silver  match-box  was  tossed  in  a  parabola  through 
the  air.  Raney  lit  his  cigar  and  cried : 

"Coming  over !" 

This  time  no  parabola  was  described.  The  path  of  the 
projectile  was  a  straight  line  from  O'Rane's  upraised  hand 
to  the  stem  of  Dainton's  glass. 

"Ai  direction  and  perfect  elevation,"  Arden  remarked. 
The  glass  fell  where  it  was  struck,  spreading  a  film  of  white 
liquid  over  the  dessert-plate,  and  O'Rane  sprang  to  his  feet 
with  profuse — and  I  have  no  doubt  sincere — regret  for  spoil- 
an  eighteenth-century  Venetian  set. 

"Am  I  plagiarizing  anyone  if  I  call  you  a  cad,  Crabtree?" 
he  inquired  twenty  minutes  later,  as  they  crossed  the  hall  to 
the  drawing-room. 

"Damn  your  soul  ...  !"  began  Crabtree,  genuinely  of- 
fended ;  but  the  door  was  reached  before  the  theme  could  be 
developed. 

There  was  a  tell-tale  spot  of  colour  round  O'Rane's  cheek- 
bones, however,  and  Sonia  with  quick  perception  manoeuvred 
Crabtree  into  a  chair  by  her  mother's  side.  She  herself  re- 
mained standing  till  the  rest  of  us  were  seated  and  then  beck- 
oned to  O'Rane  to  share  a  sofa  with  her  by  the  other  fire  at  the 
far  end  of  the  room. 

"Look  here,  David,  "  she  began  severely. 


226  SONIA 

O'Rane  was  engrossed  in  his  own  reflections  and  began 
thinking  aloud. 

"He's  not  a  white  man,  you  know,"  he  said  musingly.  "I 
beg  your  pardon,  Sonia  ?" 

She  lay  back  disdainfully  with  her  hands  clasped  behind 
her  head. 

"David,  I've  got  an  idea  that  you  and  Tony  never  meet 
without  quarrelling.  Other  people  get  on  with  him.  /  get 
on  with  him.  Well,  if  you  think  it's  good  form  to  go  to  other 
people's  houses  and  pick  quarrels  with  guests  who  are  good 
enough  for  them " 

O'Rane  shook  his  head. 

"He's  not.    That's  the  whole  trouble." 

"I'm  fairly  particular  in  the  people  I  care  to  have  as 
friends,  David,"  she  answered,  in  a  tone  which  even  her  com- 
panion recognized  as  dangerous. 

"The  Lord  preserve  you  in  that  belief,"  he  exclaimed  ironi- 
cally. "If  you  want  my  candid  opinion " 

"I  don't." 

"Perhaps  you're  afraid  to  hear  it?"  he  jeered. 

Sonia  shrugged  her  shoulders  with  an  air  of  boredom. 

"You  may  say  what  you  like,"  she  told  him,  "but  perhaps 
you'll  regret  it  afterwards." 

"I'll  risk  that.  Well,  to  use  a  word  you  English  always 
fight  shy  of,  the  fellow's  not  a  gentleman." 

Sonia  clenched  her  hands  and  bit  her  lip  to  keep  control 
of  herself. 

"You  dare  to  say  that  of  a  friend  of  mine  ?" 

"That's  the  pity  of  it,  Sonia,"  O'Rane  returned  easily. 
"You're  too  good  to  be  contaminated  with  that  kind  of  stuff. 
He  hasn't  the  instincts  of  a  gentleman." 

From  an  early  age  most  people  had  hastened  to  conciliate 
and  agree  with  Sonia  when  she  was  angry.  I  know  nothing 
more  characteristic  of  O'Rane  than  his  repetition  of  the  insult. 
She  collected  herself  and  struck  coolly  at  his  most  vulnerable 
part. 

"Perhaps,  from  what  I  know  of  you,  you're  not  in  a 
position  to  be  a  very  good  judge,"  she  suggested. 


SONIA  DAINTON  227 

Eight  years  before  when  O'Rane  was  cast  up  on  the  shore 
at  Melton,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  such  a  remark 
would  have  brought  the  speaker  within  easy  distance  of  being 
killed.  Now  he  only  went  pale  and  sat  very  still  until  he 
could  speak  dispassionately. 

"I  shall  be  on  the  high  seas  in  a  week's  time,"  he  told  her, 
"and  we  shan't  meet  again  for  some  years.  I've  given  you 
my  parting  advice " 

Sonia  was  worsted,  but  she  would  not  admit  defeat  without 
a  last  struggle. 

"And  when  you  come  back  you  will  find  us  married,"  she 
answered  in  a  level  voice. 

"I'll  come  back  for  your  wedding!"  he  laughed. 

"I  forget  how  long  you  said  .  .  ." 

"My  child,  you  won't  be  married  to  Crabtree  in  three 
years." 

"David,  to-night  before  dinner " 

O'Rane  waved  his  hand  in  deprecation. 

"I  don't  disbelieve  you!  Will  you  give  me  your  blessing 
before  I  start?  I'm  supposed  to  be  superstitious,  and  as  I'm 
beginning  again  from  the  bottom  of  the  ladder — God !  it's 
nearly  ten  years  since  my  last  effort — Part  friends,  Sonia." 

"I  don't  care  if  I  never  see  you  again !"  she  answered  pas- 
sionately. "You  simply  think  of  new  ways  of  trying  to  humili- 
ate me— — " 

"Lord  be  praised  there's  still  some  one  fond  enough  of 
you  to  try,"  he  murmured  half  to  himself. 

Late  that  night  O'Rane  sat  on  the  foot  of  my  bed  detailing 
his  last  interview.  I  told  him  things  that  nobody  but  he' 
would  need  to  be  told — that  he  had  only  himself  to  thank  for 
his  dismissal,  that  a  spoiled  and  petted  semi-professional 
beauty  was  not  a  good  medium  for  his  unduly  direct  methods 
and  that  he  could  congratulate  himself  on  driving  Sonia  three- 
fourths  against  her  will  into  Crabtree's  arms — in  the  very 
terms  of  the  warning  I  had  given  him  at  Lake  House. 

"You  see,  I  don't  want  to  marry  a  professional  beauty,"  he 
objected. 


228  SONIA 

"Then  take  Sonia  at  her  word  and  don't  meet  her  again," 
I  said. 

"But  that's  only  one  side  of  her,  the  artificial  side,  the 
London  hothouse  side.  Before  all  this,  when  she  was  a  child 
of  twelve  and  I  lived  in  a  misery  of  spirit  that  would  drive 
some  men  to  suicide.  ...  In  those  days  Sonia — Bah!  she's 
ashamed  of  it  now,  but  she  showed  me  the  whole  of  her  brave, 
tender,  generous  soul — I  said,  and  I  say  still,  that  there's  hope 
of  salvation  for  the  damned  if  he  comes  before  the  Judgement 
Seat  and  boasts  that  once,  even  for  a  moment " 

His  voice  rose  and  grew  rich  with  the  familiar  Irish  rhetoric 
till  I  begged  him  to  remember  the  slumbering  household. 

"There  are  so  many  Sonia  Daintons,"  he  mused,  "but  that's 
the  one  I  always  see.  It's  the  one  I  shall  see  for  the  next  three 
years."  He  uncurled  his  legs  and  slid  down  from  the  bed.  "I 
sail  next  week,  George.  Dine  with  me  on  Thursday  to  say 
good-bye." 

"No,  you  dine  with  me." 

"I  asked  you  first — my  last  favour  on  English  soil:  I'll 
dine  the  night  I  get  back." 

"That's  a  little  vague,"  I  complained.  "You  may  be  gone 
ten  years." 

He  rose  gracefully  to  the  bait. 

"Make  it  as  definite  as  you  like.  This  is  nineteen  six.  Say 
nineteen  ten.  I  shall  be  back  in — May.  First  of  May,  let's 
call  it.  Shall  we  say  the  Club  ?" 

"By  all  means.  Will  eight  o'clock  suit  you?  And  what 
shall  I  order?" 

"Oh,  you  know  I  eat  anything.  Are  black  ties  allowed  at 
the  Eclectic  ?  No,  wait  a  bit,  it'll  be  the  beginning  of  the  Sea- 
son, and  the  House'll  be  sitting;  you'll  either  be  in  morning 
dress  or  full  regimentals.  You  please  yourself,  and  I'll  come 
in  a  short  jacket.  Good  night." 

"Good  night,  Raney,  you  old  ass." 

"I  shall  be  there,"  he  insisted,  as  he  switched  off  the  light. 

Six  days  later  the  papers  announced  to  all  whom  it  might 
concern  that  Lord  Summertown  and  Mr.  D.  O'Rane  had  left 
Tilbury  for  Bombay  by  the  P.  &  O.  "Multan." 


CHAPTER   V 


LORING 

"The  nobles  .  .  .  have  nearly  ceased  either  to  guide  or  mis- 
guide; .  .  .  the  Noble  has  changed  his  fighting  sword  into  a  court 
rapier;  and  now  loyally  attends  his  King  as  ministering  satellite; 
divides  the  spoil,  not  now  by  violence  and  murder,  but  by  soliciting 
and  finesse.  .  .  .  For  the  rest,  their  privileges  every  way  are  now 
much  curtailed.  .  .  .  Close-viewed,  their  industry  and  function  is 
that  of  dressing  gracefully  and  eating  sumptuously.  .  .  .  Neverthe- 
less, one  has  still  partly  a  feeling  with  the  lady  Marechale:  'Depend 
upon  it,  Sir,  God  thinks  twice  before  damning  a  man  of  that  quality.' 
These  people,  of  old,  surely  had  virtues,  uses;  or  they  could  not 
have  been  there." — THOMAS  CARLYLE,  "The  French  Revolution." 


SOMEWHERE  in  my  library  at  Lake  House  there  is  a 
little  volume  of  essays  entitled  "History  Re-written."  It 
is  a  collection  of  jeux  d* esprit  exhumed  from  a  dozen  re- 
views by  an  author  whose  imagination  loved  to  annihilate  a 
single  historical  fact  and  reconstruct  the  changed  consequences. 
There  is  one  picture  of  the  Greeks  flying  in  disorder  before 
the  triumphant  Darius  on  the  plain  of  Marathon,  and  the  sub- 
jection of  Europe  to  an  Eastern  despotism ;  another  of  Julius 
Caesar  successfully  defending  himself  against  his  would-be 
assassins ;  a  third  of  Mahomet  dying  of  starvation  during  the 
Hegira.  I  recall  a  study  of  Luther  overwhelming  the  Vatican 
in  argument,  Columbus  shipwrecked  in  mid-Atlantic,  the  Regi- 

229 


230  SONIA 

ment  of  Flanders  firing  on  the  Paris  mob,  Napoleon  leading  the 
Grand  Armee  to  luxurious  winter  quarters  in  Moscow. 

Sometimes  I  wonder  whether  history  would  have  had  to 
be  much  re- written  if  the  King  of  England  and  the  German 
Emperor  had  been  personally  more  cordial  from  1901  to 
1910;  whether,  too,  destiny  could  have  been  cheated  if 
Sir  Henry  Campbell-Bannerman  had  lived  another  five  years. 
"C.-B."  laboured  for  peace,  and  his  honesty  was  not  called 
in  question ;  there  was  always  the  certainty  that  democracy 
the  world  over  would  one  day  grow  strong  enough  to  forbid 
war;  there  was  always  the  chance  that  this  decisive  strength 
would  come  before  a  military  party  could  issue  its  mobilization 
orders. 

I  know  I  speak  in  a  minority  of  one :  a  thousand  pens  have 
shown  that  war  was  pre-ordained:  yet — I  wonder  if  the 
writers  guess  how  nearly  it  was  avoided.  When  Sir  Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman  resigned,  there  was  no  one  of  equal  au- 
thority to  carry  on  his  work.  For  a  space  the  unconvinced 
preached  disarmament  to  the  unbelieving,  then  impatiently 
girded  themselves  for  war.  The  Japanese  Alliance,  the  French 
Entente,  the  Russian  rapprochement  were  good  platform 
points  for  a  German  scaremonger.  If  we  had  continued  work- 
ing for  peace  and  keeping  free  of  continental  engagements,  I 
wonder  whether  our  teaching  would  have  had  time  to  bear 
fruit.  My  uncle  Bertrand  thought  so  and,  though  my  political 
beliefs  are  too  unstable  to  matter,  he  converted  me  from  a 
showy  Liberal  Imperialism  to  an  old-fashioned  peaceful  in- 
sularity. The  change  came  gradually.  My  allegiance  to  the 
party  weakened  when  Bill  after  Bill  was  contemptuously  re- 
jected in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  our  leaders  fulminated  and 
declined  battle.  Thereafter  a  certain  uneasiness  was  oc- 
casioned by  the  vagaries  of  the  Foreign  Office.  Ostensibly  our 
French  Entente  was  formed  to  facilitate  the  settlement  of  out- 
standing questions  in  North  Africa ;  and,  though  we  were  told 
from  the  Treasury  Bench  that  militarily  we  were  still  uncom- 
mitted, Lobby  gossip  had  a  dozen  disquieting  theories  of  new 
secret  engagements.  Bertrand  used  to  get  his  knuckles  rapped 
for  indiscreet  questions  to  the  Foreign  Secretary,  but  rebuffs 


LORING  231 

from  mandarins  only  increased  his  suspicion  that  the  whole 
truth  was  being  withheld  from  the  House  of  Commons. 

Growing  distrust  of  a  brilliant  and  exasperatingly  Celestial 
Ministry  determined  the  course  of  my  later  years  in  Parlia- 
ment. O'Rane  left  England  at  the  end  of  1906,  my  con- 
stituents rejected  me  in  the  first  election  of  1910;  in  the  in- 
tervening time  I  joined  an  advanced  Radical  group  in  advo- 
cating better  international  understandings  and  immediate  war 
on  the  House  of  Lords.  They  were  the  three  busiest  years  of 
my  life,  and,  when  my  uncle  set  his  peace  organization  to  work, 
a  day  of  sixteen  hours  was  divided  equally  between  Fleet 
Street,  the  House,  and  the  Central  Disarmament  Committee  in 
Princes  Gardens. 

Of  the  outside  world  I  saw  even  less  than  in  my  first 
session  when  I  was  a  loyal  party  man ;  and,  if  there  had  been 
no  Liberal  Bills  for  Loring  to  wreck,  I  should  have  lost  touch 
with  all  my  former  friends.  As  it  was,  he  would  ask  me 
with  exaggerated  fear  how  much  time  I  gave  him  to  make 
peace  with  his  Maker.  I  would  expound  the  ojily  possible 
solution  of  the  House  of  Lords  problem — (there  were  always 
six  at  any  given  time,  all  mutually  destructive) — and  under 
the  shadow  of  the  guillotine  we  would  adjourn  for  dinner  and 
inquire  whether  anything  had  been  heard  of  Raney.  It  is 
almost  superfluous  to  say  that  no  letter  was  ever  received  from 
him,  but  Summertown  cabled  laconically  at  two-month  inter- 
vals, and  distorted  messages  reached  us  from  Sally  Farwell  or 
Lady  Marlyn.  It  was  agreed  that  whichever  first  received 
news  of  the  wanderers  should  immediately  communicate  with 
the  other,  and  the  formula — "Lord  Loring's  compliments,  and 
will  you  dine  with  him  to-night?" — nine  times  out  of  ten 
meant  that  the  long-suffering  Lady  Marlyn  had  recently  been 
handed  a  flimsy  sheet  with  some  such  words  as  "All  well  Raney 
married  to  Dowager  Queen  of  Siam  leaving  to-day  for  Java." 

When  I  think  of  Loring  at  this  time  I  always  recall 
Burgess's  parting  advice  on  our  last  day  at  Melton.  Few 
men  who  prophesied  so  freely  could  boast  of  making  so  few 
mistakes ;  he  had  predicted  that  there  was  no  third  course 
beyond  a  definite  career  such  as  the  Diplomatic  Service  and  a 


232  SONIA 

dilettante  politico-social  existence  of  drift  such  as  Loring  now 
pursued.  It  does  not  lie  in  my  mouth  to  pass  judgement,  but  I 
was  sorry  to  see  a  man  with  ten  times  my  ability  dabbling  in 
life  as  negligently  as  he  did.  His  whole  energy  was  devoted  to 
recapturing  the  last  enchantments  of  the  Middle  Ages :  ecclesi- 
astically, politically  and  socially  he  stood  for  a  vanished  order 
and,  when  his  own  generation  declined  to  jump  backward 
across  the  centuries,  he  shrugged  his  shoulders  in  good- 
humoured  contempt  and  walked  his  road  alone — obstinate, 
aloof  and  correct  to  the  last  button  of  his  boot.  In  the  Lords 
he  led  the  wildest  of  the  Backwoodsmen  groups,  in  Society  he 
fluttered  with  a  swarm  where  all  were  called  by  the  Christian 
name  and  each  took  pride  in  the  large  number  of  people  he 
did  not  know. 

Failure  is  so  little  honoured  that  there  is  something 
pathetic  in  the  sight  of  a  man  refusing  to  be  modernized. 
At  the  same  time,  though  my  instincts  are  Bohemian,  I  am 
glad  to  think  that  at  least  one  section  of  society  refused  to 
be  bought  up  by  the  invaders  who  now  assailed  London  with 
a  handful  of  bank  cheques.  These  years  were  the  era  of  Adolf 
Erckmann  and  his  retainers ;  their  war-paint  and  war-cries, 
their  ruthlessness  and  ferocity  of  attack  led  Loring  to  dub  them 
"les  Apaches,"  and  for  seven  or  eight  years  before  the  out- 
break of  war  there  was  truceless  fighting  between  the  old  order 
and  the  new.  Before  it  was  over,  Loring  was  beaten.  He 
kept  his  own  house  free  of  the  invaders  and  occasionally  raided 
their  camp  and  rescued  a  prisoner.  Summertown,  for  ex- 
ample, had  been  captured  for  a  time  and  came  near  to  swelling 
the  number  of  Peerage  and  Stage  romances.  It  is  to  Loring's 
sole  credit  that  the  indiscretion  was  scotched.  But  a  few 
local  successes  could  not  be  magnified  into  a  general  victory, 
and  by  1914  London  lay  at  the  feet  of  Erckmann,  Pennington, 
Mrs.  Welman  and  a  few  other  chiefs  with  their  followers 
drawn  from  every  quarter  of  England. 

Erckmann's  first  purchase  was  Lord  Pennington — who  in- 
deed was  on  sale  for  anyone  who  would  give  him  five  meals  a 
day,  excitement,  noise,  youth  and  not  too  intellectual  conver- 
sation. Next  came  Mrs.  Welman,  whose  spirit  yet  lived  amid 


LORING  233 

the  dusts  and  draughts  and  dressing-rooms  of  that  Avenue 
Theatre  she  had  forsaken  to  marry  her  wealthy  paralytic  hus- 
band. Thereafter  it  was  simply  a  question  'of  capillary  at- 
traction. The  titles  glamoured  the  stage,  the  stage  fascinated 
the  titles,  and  Erckmann,  if  he  did  not  attract,  at  least  paid  for 
all.  It  was  a  motley  gathering  with  a  sadly  draggled  reputa- 
tion here  and  there:  you  would  find  one  or  two  Americans, 
several  Jews,  a  few  Germans  and  an  astonishing  number  of 
young-men-about-town  getting  rich  without  undue  toil  on  the 
wizard  Erckmann's  advice.  "You  wand  a  good  dime,  hem?" 
he  would  say  invitingly.  "You  gome  with  me,  my  vriend." 
And  they  came. 

According  to  their  lights,  too,  they  had  the  best  time  in 
the  world.  Ever  trooping  together  from  limelight  to  lime- 
light, you  would  find  a  row  of  them  in  the  stalls  for  any 
first  night:  the  Royal  Box  was  always  theirs  for  a  costume 
ball,  and  visitors  to  a  regatta  would  punt  half  a  mile  to  see  the 
splendour  of  their  house-boat.  Should  you  enter  a  restaurant, 
their  presence  would  be  betrayed  by  the  free-and-easy  relations 
existing  between  themselves  and  the  waiters — whom  they 
called  by  nicknames:  and,  were  you  a  recluse,  the  "Tickler" 
would  portray  the  whole  horde  on  Erckmann's  lawn  at  Marlow, 
or  you  could  sit  by  your  fireside,  the  "Catch"  open  on  your 
knees,  envying  them  their  presence  in  "Lord  Pennington's 
house-party  in  Buckinghamshire." 

I  give  them  all  credit  for  their  powers  of  organization.  A 
charity  ball  in  their  prehensile  hands  went  with  an  undoubted 
swing,  and  no  one  who  spent  a  week-end  in  their  company 
could  reasonably  complain  of  dullness.  I  remember  that  the 
papers  for  some  months  were  full  of  "Ragging  in  Country 
House"  cases ;  there  was  the  mock  burglary  at  Pennington's 
place,  Erckmann's  launch  tried  to  shoot  Marlow  Weir  at  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  the  unexplained  fire  in  Mrs.  Wei- 
man's  Surrey  cottage  burned  one  of  her  maids  to  death.  Some 
thought  that  they  went  perhaps  a  little  too  far  in  this  last 
escapade,  and  for  a  time  the  Smart  Set  dropped  out  of  the 
public  gaze.  Then  the  Dean  of  St.  Pancras,  struggling  into 
the  mantle  of  Savonarola,  devoted  a  course  of  Advent  sermons 


234  SONIA 

to  anathematizing  them  on  the  curious  ground  that  they  were 
responsible  for  a  falling  birth-rate,  and  the  discussion — with 
this  decanal  benediction  on  it — became  brisk  and  general. 

There  were  houses  in  London  where  I  met  them,  and  tables 
where  I  supped  with  voluble,  fluffy  little  footlight  favourites 
whose  accent  and  choice  of  language  were  notably  more  lit- 
erary at  the  beginning  of  the  meal  than  at  the  end.  Dozens  of 
carmined  lips  used  to  ask  whether  I  had  seen  their  "show" ; 
other  dozens  described  their  next  engagements  and  the  number 
of  pounds  a  week  they  had  just  refused.  I  floundered  by  the 
hour  in  contemporary  theatrical  history  and  daringly  discussed 
actor  managers  by  their  Christian  names. 

Loring  had  no  taste  for  such  adventures.  To  be  an  Apache 
was  to  be  refused  admission  to  his  house.  He  complained  of 
their  vitality  and  confessed  weakness  in  repartee  when  accost- 
ed as  a  "sport"  or  informed  that  he  "must  have  a  drink." 

"We  get  at  cross-purposes,"  he  sighed,  stretching  himself 
to  his  full,  handsome,  six  foot  three  and  smoothing  his  mous- 
tache. "The  fault's  mine,  but  there  it  is.  I've  arrived  fainting 
at  the  end  of  a  long  journey  because  I've  not  got  the  buffet 
manner  with  barmaids." 

As  a  fellow-member  of  the  "Eclectic,"  I  was  on  nodding 
terms-  with  Erckmann,  but  to  the  end  he  and  Loring  never 
met.  Perhaps  a  dozen  other  hosts  and  hostesses  ranged 
themselves  on  the  side  of  old-fashioned  prudery,  including  for 
a  time  Lady  Dainton,  who  assured  me  that  she  did  not  know 
what  Society  was  coming  to.  I  was  dining  with  her  one  even- 
ing towards  the  end  of  1907  to  meet  the  girl  Tom  had  just 
engaged  himself  to  marry. 

"I  mean  I  would  never  dream  of  letting  Sonia  know  such 
people,  don't  you  know  ?"  she  told  me. 

"I  share  your  view,"  I  said,  finding  time  to  recall  that 
in  the  Daintons'  first  London  Season  Sonia  had  habitually  at- 
tended the  meetings  of  the  Four-in-hand  Club  on  Erckmann's 
box  seat. 

"You  wait  till  I'm  married,  mother !"  said  Sonia,  who  had 
overheard  the  conversation. 

"When's  the  great  event  coming  off?"  I  asked. 


LORING  235 

"Oh,  not  at  present,"  said  Lady  Dainton  rather  hurriedly. 
"I  don't  want  two  weddings  in  the  family  at  the  same  time. 
Besides,  Tony's  only  been  at  the  Bar  a  short  time.  We  must 
wait  till  his  position's  a  little  more  established,  don't  you 
know?" 

I  agreed,  as  I  always  agree  with  Lady  Dainton.  Yet  as  I 
walked  home  that  night  I  murmured  to  myself  some  hackneyed 
lines  from  Robert  Burns.  If  there  was  one  thing  more  certain 
to  my  mind  than  another,  it  was  that  the  ever-shrewd  Anthony 
Crabtree  relied  on  the  Daintons  and  the  "desperate  thing"  of 
marriage  to  establish  his  position. 

I  saw  and  heard  no  more  of  the  family  until  the  autumn. 
One  morning  in  October  Loring  rang  me  up  with  the  news  that 
Summertown  was  in  London,  dining  that  night  at  Hale's.  I 
was  invited  to  meet  him  and  found  that  eleven  months'  travel 
had  altogether  failed  to  mature  him.  A  spasmodic,  sandy 
moustache  hinted  at  increasing  age,  but  in  other  respects  he 
was  the  same  freckled,  snub-nosed  embodiment  of  irresponsi- 
bility as  ever.  The  same  taste  for  local  colour  characterized 
him  as  when  on  his  return  from  America  he  lisped  of  candy, 
cocktails,  dollar-bills  and  the  art  of  clubbing  as  practised  by  the 
New  York  police:  he  was  now  the  completest  Anglo-Indian 
I  have  ever  met,  and  his  conversation  sparkled  with  sahibs  and 
white  men,  the  Rains  and  the  Hot  Weather,  the  Hills  in  gen- 
eral and  half -sacred  Simla  in  particular.  Mr.  Warren  Hast- 
ings, looking  sourly  down  from  the  wall  of  Hale's  coffee-room, 
must  have  seen  us  as  seated  at  endless  Tiffin — paid  by  means  of, 
Chits — where  Saises,  Khitmutgars  and  Ayahs  entered  and 
salaamed,  and  twenty-one  gun  salutes  boomed  faintly  in  the 
distance — as  men  have  politely  sat  for  years  round  any  re- 
turned traveller  or  student  of  Kipling's  Indian  stories. 

"What  have  you  done  with  Raney?"  Loring  asked  as  the 
Odyssey  drew  to  its  close. 

"I  left  him  in  Paris,"  was  the  answer.  "We  were  going 
on  to  Spain,  but  the  guv'nor  don't  think  he's  a  suitable  com- 
panion for  a  simple,  unspoiled  lad  like  me.  My  own  adored 
mother's  choice,  too,  mark  you." 

"What  happened?"  I  asked. 


236  SONIA 

"Phew!  What  didn't?"  Summertown  leant  back  with  his 
thumbs  thrust  importantly  into  the  arm-holes  of  has  waistcoat, 
"I  suppose  you  fellows  don't  appreciate  it's  been  touch  and  go 
for  a  European  War?  Nothing  but  the  well-known  family 
tact  of  the  Marlyns " 

"Get  to  the  point,"  Loring  ordered  him. 

Summertown  bowed  his  head  to  the  reproof. 

"We  came  back  overland  from  Vladivostock  to  Moscow," 
he  said,  "and  about  that  point  Raney  recollected  that  his  foot 
was  on  his  native  heath  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  We  sprang 
lightly  out  of  the  train,  seized  our  grips  and  Baedeckers,  and 
sauntered  round  Russia  and  Poland,  eventually  bringing  up  at 
a  spot  called  Hungary — where,  by  the  way,  there's  a  drink 
called  Tokay  .  .  .  All  right,  but  you  do  spoil  a  good  story, 
you  know.  From  Hungary  it  is,  as  they  say,  a  mere  step 
to  Austria.  So  we  stepped.  Raney's  a  most  astonishing  fel- 
low, you  know,"  he  explained,  in  a  short  digression.  "He's 
lived  in  all  these  places  and  talks  the  lingo  like  a  beastly 
native.  However,  to  resume  my  absorbing  narrative,  the 
moon  shone  out  one  night  and  discovered  us  eating  scrambled 
eggs  at  a  cabaret  called  the  'Chat  Noir,'  which  being  inter- 
preted is  'Black  Cat' " 

"Thank  you,"  I  said. 

"The  fruits  of  travel,"  he  answered,  with  a  bow.  "To  us 
enters,  as  they  say  in  the  stage  directions,  a  flat-nosed  brute 
who  craves  the  favour  of  a  match.  Raney  gave  him  some 
chat  in  Hungarian — which  for  some  dam'  silly  reason  I  could 
never  understand  is  called  Magyar — and  in  a  moment  they 
were  thick  as  thieves.  I  didn't  know  what  all  the  eloquence 
was  about,  but  they  kept  dragging  in  a  chap  called  Kos- 
suth " 

"I  think  I've  heard  the  name  somewhere,"  said  Loring. 

Summertown  looked  at  him  with  admiration. 

"/  thought  it  was  one  of  the  filthy  waters  they  give  you 
when  you're  doing  a  cure.  Kossuth,  yes.  If  you're  one  of 
the  heads  you  pronounce  it  Koshoot  and  spell  it  Metternich. 
Well,  these  lads  spat  Magyar  at  each  other  and  clinked  glasses 
till  the  band  broke  down  and  everybody  was  staring  at  our 


LORING  237 

table.     Then  an  Austrian  officer  in  a  dream  of  a  grey  cloak 
strolled  up  and  made  some  offensive  remark.     Of  course,  in 
mere  vulgar  abuse,  dear  old  Raney's  a  pretty  tidy  performer, 
and  they  did  'emselves  proud.     I  heard  the  name  O'Rane 
sandwiched  in  between  the  gutturals,  and  then  the  Austrian 
got  home  with  some  pretty  phrase.     Raney  went  white  as  the 
proverbial  sheet,  picked  up  his  glove  from  the  table  and  gave 
that  officer  the  most  God  Almighty  welt  across  the  face  that 
I've  ever  seen.  There — was — the — devil  of  a  scene.  I  thought 
you  exchanged  cards  about  this  point  and  then  nipped  over 
the  frontier,  leaving  the  other  chap  and  the  seconds  and  doc- 
tors and   grave-diggers   to   keep   the   appointment   for  you. 
Not  a  bit  of  it  here!     Every  cursed  Austrian  in  that  place 
jumped  up,  yelling  his  damnedest ;  every  dog  of  an  Hungarian 
did  the  same.    One  of  the  orchestra  was  a  Bohemian,  and  he 
broke  his  'cello  over  an  Hungarian's  head,  and  there  was  an 
Italian  behind  the  bar  who  walked  into  the  Austrians  with  a 
cocktail  shaker.    I  picked  up  a  chair  and  shouted,  'Vive  Kos- 
suth !'  never  dreaming  the  poor  chap  had  been  dead  for  years, 
and  then  tables  and  sofas  hurtled  through  the  air  till  the  police 
came  in  and  killed  anybody  who  hadn't  been  killed  already — 
I'm  free  to  admit  I  faded  away  as  soon  as  I'd  smashed  the 
last  lamp.     I  thought  Raney'd  come,  too,  but  he  saw  it  out 
and  was  duly  marched  away  with  his  flat-nosed  friend  through 
a  perfect  forest  of  drawn  swords.    It  was  about  one  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  and  I  didn't  think  it  was  healthy  to  stay  up  any 
longer." 

He  paused  to  refresh  his  parched  throat. 
"Next  day  I  went  round  to  the  Embassy,"  he  continued, 
"and  there  I  had  the  surprise  of  my  life.  While  I  was  im- 
proving my  mind  in  the  East,  that  eminently  respectable  Coun- 
cillor of  Embassy,  my  father,  had  been  shifted  from  Paris 
and  sent  to  Vienna  as  Charge  d'Affaires.  He  was  very  glad 
to  see  me,  of  course,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  but  I  couldn't 
help  feeling  I  should  have  preferred  to  carry  my  little  troubles 
to  another  man.  I  toned  my  story  down  a  good  bit,  and 
after  some  agitated  notes  and  interviews  Raney  was  brought 
up  for  judgement  with  an  armed  escort.  Most  of  him  was  in 


238  SONIA 

a  sling,  and  the  rest  just  hung  down  in  strips  from  the  bones. 
As  soon  as  they  started  talking  I  found  we'd  fairly  done  it 
in  the  night  before.  Our  flat-nosed  Hungarian  friend  was 
mixed  up  with  a  Secret  Society  and  pretty  consistently  shad- 
owed by  the  police.  He  and  Raney  had  fraternized  and  ex- 
changed cards,  and,  apparently  old  O'Rane  wasn't  much  of  a 
popular  favorite  in  Austria.  He  and  Vive  Kossuth  had  caused 
the  Government  all  kinds  of  vexation  which  weren't  forgotten 
though  both  of  them  were  dead,  and  when  the  flat-nosed  man 
drank  to  their  pious  memory  and  Raney  held  forth  on  Hun- 
garian Independence,  you  can  imagine  the  Austrian  contingent 
was  no  end  restive. 

"The  poor  old  Guv'nor  had  his  work  cut  out  to  smooth 
things  down.     For  about  an  hour  he  buttered  'em  all  up  and 
apologized  to  everybody,  swearing  that  Raney  was  tight — 
which  was  an  absolute  lie.    There  was  a  fine  recommendation 
to  mercy  and  an  allusion  to  a  father's  feeling — lump  in  the 
throat,  all  that  sort  of  thing — and  then  the  Guv'nor  closed 
down.     I  hoped  it  was  all  over,  but  the  Austrian  lads  were 
out  for  blood — we  had  to  pay  for  all  the  damage,  and  our 
friend  the  officer  was  trundled  along  in  a  wheeled  chair  to 
receive  our  apologies,  and  then  the  Minister  of  the  Interior, 
or  the  Prefect  of  Police,  or  some  bug  like  that,  popped  into 
another  room  with  the  Guv'nor  and  dictated  terms  for  the 
future.    /  got  off  with  a  caution,  'but  poor  old  Raney  took  it 
in  the  neck.    They  stripped  him  and  measured  him  and  took 
his  finger-prints  and  photographed  him  about  a  dozen  times. 
And  in  the  afternoon  an  escort  of  soldiers  frog's-marched  us 
to  the  Bavarian  frontier  and  took  a  tender  farewell,  with  a 
plain  statement  in  writing  that,  if  ever  Raney  put  one  toe  of 
either  foot  on  an  inch  of  his  Imperial  Majesty  Franz  Josef's 
territory  from  now  till  the  end  of  time,  he'd  first  of  all  be 
shot  and  then  disembowelled  and  then  confined  in  a  fortress 
for  the  rest  of  his  days.    The  Guv'nor  don't  fancy  me  for  the 
Diplomatic;  he  says  I  want  discipline,  so  the  Army's  going 
to  try  its  hand  on  me."    He  shrugged  his  shoulders  tolerantly. 
"I  don't  mind,  it's  all  in  the  day's  work,  but  I'd  have  you 
observe  the  kind  of  man  my  sainted  mother  sends  me  abroad 


LORING  239; 

with  on  the  grounds  that  I  should  only  get  up  to  mischief 
if  I  went  alone." 

Of  O'Rane's  future  movements  Summertown  could  tell 
us  nothing  beyond  the  fact  that  he  was  shortly  "starting  for 
Mexico,  and  that  letters  to  his  bank  would,  in  due  course,  be 
forwarded. 

"I  shall  write  to  him  to-night,"  said  Loring,  as  we  walked 
up  St.  James's  Street.  Summertown  had  heard  that  roulette 
was  being  played  illicitly  somewhere  in  Chelsea  and  was 
anxious  to  check  the  accuracy  of  the  report. 

"At  this  hour?"  I  asked,  glancing  at  my  watch.  It  was 
past  one  o'clock. 

"I  can  do  it  in  three  lines,"  he  answered.  "It's  about 
his  friend  Crabtree.  Have  you  heard?" 

"I  can  believe  anything  of  him,"  I  said,  as  I  resigned 
myself  to  listen. 

"Then  you  haven't  heard.  Well,  the  engagement's  off. 
I  met  your  cousin  Violet  at  lunch  to-day,  and  she  had  it  from 
Lady  Dainton.  No  reason  given." 

"Either  of  us  can  supply  it,"  I  said. 

Loring  made  no  comment. 

"Sonia  can  do  better  than  that,"  he  said,  after  we  had 
walked  for  some  time  in  silence. 

"So,  possibly,  can  Crabtree,"  I  suggested.  "In  her  present 
state— 

"My  dear  George,  she's  still  a  child,"  he  answered,  with 
some  warmth. 

"There  are  children  and  children."  I  had  neither  forgiven 
nor  forgotten  her  behaviour  to  O'Rane  for  a  year  or  two. 

"I  don't  think  the  man  who  marries  Sonia  is  at  all  to  be 
pitied,"  Loring  said  rather  aggressively. 

The  words  may  have  meant  that  such  a  man  was  to  be 
envied — or  equally  that  he  took  the  risk  with  his  eyes  open. 
But  we  were  at  the  corner  of  Half  Moon  Street,  and  Loring 
had  waved  good-night  and  was  walking  towards  Curzon  Street 
before  I  was  ready  to  ask  him. 


24o  SONIA 

ii 

I  look  back  on  my  life  between  1907  and  1910  as  three 
years'  hard  labour.  The  sentence  began  to  run  about  a  week 
after  Summertown's  return  from  the  Continent,  and  it  was 
only  when  he  had  been  coaxed  and  pushed  into  a  commission 
in  the  Third  Grenadier  Guards  and  I  was  dining  with  the 
King's  Guard  in  St.  James's  Palace,  six  months  later,  that  I 
heard  news  of  O'Rane's  strangely  devious  progress  to  the  New 
World. 

Devious,  and  yet  perhaps  not  strange.  He  went  by  way 
of  British  East  Africa,  though  what  he  did  and  how  long  he 
remained  there,  no  man  has  discovered.  The  documentary 
evidence  ended  with  a  two-line  postcard  from  Mombasa,  and 
anyone  could  interpret  it  as  he  pleased.  Summertown's  ex- 
planations grew  more  and  more  picturesque  as  dinner  went 
on.  O'Rane,  he  assured  me,  was  a  Great  White  Rajah  holding 
sway  from  the  Lakes  to  the  Sudan  and  from  the  Desert  to 
the  now  empty  throne  of  Zanzibar ;  later,  he  had  "gone  black" 
and  was  living  patriarchally  in  a  kraal  with  scores  of  natives 
wives  and  one  immaculate  silk  hat  between  himself  and  un- 
ashamed nudity ;  later  still,  he  had  proclaimed  himself  Mahdi, 
and  was  leading  frenzied  hordes  of  Dervishes  to  the  recap- 
ture of  Khartoum.  Raney  himself  told  me  afterwards  that 
he  was  at  one  time  bar-tender  in  the  Nairobi  Club  and  the 
rest  of  the  while  turning  his  hand,  not  altogether  without 
success,  to  anything  in  heaven  above  or  the  waters  beneath 
that  had  money  in  it.  When  he  left  Africa  I  have  no  idea, 
but  the  next  time  I  heard  of  him  he  had  unquestionably  reached 
Mexico. 

In  the  meantime  I  was  wearily  serving  my  sentence  in 
London.  I  have  mentioned  the  guerilla  warfare  carried  on 
by  Bertrand  against  the  Foreign  Office  from  the  time  of  the 
Franco-British  entente.  Secret  treaties  or  understandings 
were  new  and  amazingly  distasteful  to  the  Radical  wing,  the 
Lobby  rumours  only  increased  the  general  uneasiness,  and 
something  of  a  crisis  was  reached  when  the  undefined  alliance 


LORING  241 

was  joined  by  Russia.  We  fire-eaters  had  lavished  invective 
on  the  Czar's  Government  at  the  time  of  "Red  Sunday,"  and 
a  faineant  Duma  hardly  availed  to  drive  Father  Gapon  and 
the  litter  of  dead  in  the  Petersburg  streets  from  our  memory. 
If,  of  course,  one  country  after  another  was  to  be  drawn  into 
the  entente,  well  and  good;  there  could  be  no  need  for  so 
much  bated  breath  and  mystery.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
were  dividing  Europe  into  two  groups, — at  best  for  a  competi- 
tion in  armaments,  at  worse  for  a  trial  of  strength, — then  the 
men  and  women  whose  lives  were  handed  out  as  stakes  had 
the  right  to  know  the  gamble  their  rulers  were  meditating. 

In  this  connexion  I  make  free  recantation  of  one  heresy: 
I  no  longer  desire  open  diplomacy.  Had  it  obtained  for  the 
last  generation,  war  might  have  been  postponed;  but,  if  war 
was  as  consistently  intended  by  Germany  as  I  am  assured  on 
all  hands,  it  would  only  have  been  postponed  till  a  less  for- 
midable alliance  opposed  her.  To  the  other  half  of  my  creed 
I  remain  loyal,  though  my  loyalty  be  tinged  with  despair. 
Now,  as  then,  I  look  forward  to  an  era  of  universal  arbitra- 
tion, a  pro  rata  reduction  of  armaments  leading  in  time  to 
the  abolition  of  national  armies  and  navies  and  the  establish- 
ment of  a  United  States  of  the  world  with  federal  control 
of  the  world's  constabulary.  The  ideal  will  not  materialize 
to-day  or  to-morrow,  but — as  O'Rane  was  fond  of  saying — 
slavery  and  torture  died  hard,  the  rule  of  law  between  in- 
dividuals did  not  come  in  a  night. 

Bertrand's  motives  in  launching  his  propaganda  I  am  not 
competent  to  judge.  Perhaps  his  attitude  of  'eternal  scepti- 
cism was  beginning  to  pall ;  perhaps  he  was  as  alarmed  as 
he  pretended  to  be — and  there  is  little  doubt  that  for  half  a 
dozen  years  before  the  war  there  was  a  latent  diplomatic 
crisis  whenever  the  harvest  had  been  gathered  in  and  the 
armies  of  the  Continent  were  mobilized  for  autumn  manoeu- 
vres ;  certainly  a  personal  animus  towards  the  Foreign  Office, 
a  resentment  for  the  Government's  lofty  practice  of  driving 
the  Commons  in  blinkers  provided  a  stimulus  to  his  activity. 
And  for  all  the  routine  and  drudgery,  there  was  excitement 
and  a  great  novelty  in  the  campaign;  I'appetit  vient  en  man- 


242  SONIA 

geant,  and  to  some  extent  we  succumbed  to  the  enthusiasm 
we  tried  to  inspire  in  others. 

Princes  Gardens  saw  the  birth  of  this,  as  of  half  a  hundred 
similar  movements.  We  christened  our  association  the  "Dis- 
armament League,"  floated  a  weekly  paper  with  the  evangelic 
title  of  "Peace,"  organized  an  army  of  itinerant  lecturers, 
appointed  corresponding  members  in  every  quarter  of  the 
globe,  affiliated  ourselves  to  any  foreign  body  that  would 
have  us,  and  arranged  broad-minded  visits  of  inspection  to 
the  lands  of  sympathizers  and  suspects. 

The  work  was  enormous.  Nothing  was  too  great  or  too 
small  for  our  attention,  and  Bertrand  had  all  a  great  com- 
mander's capacity  for  delegating  work  to  others.  As  editor 
of  "Peace"  he  would  sketch  out  a  few  general  ideas,  leave 
me  to  turn  up  references  and  fill  in  details,  and  on  Thursday, 
as  we  were  going  to  Press,  stroll  round  to  the  draughty,  gas- 
lit  office  in  Bouverie  Street  with  luminous  and  urgent  sug- 
gestions for  altering  the  tone  of  the  leading  articles  or  in- 
cluding lengthy  contributions  from  his  own  pen  in  an  already 
overset  paper. 

I  imagine  there  is  no  man  born  of  woman  who  does  not 
believe  himself  qualified  to  found  and  run  an  important  daily, 
weekly  or  monthly  paper.  We  were  no  exception,  and  my 
uncle's  self-confidence  was  fortified  by  hazy  and  idealistic 
memories  of  the  Fleet  Street  he  had  served  half  a  century 
before.  We  had  the  saving  prudence  to  employ  one  or  two 
trained  journalists  and  a  Scotch  sub-editor  of  infinite  patience 
to  guide — but  never  thwart — our  amateur  inspiration.  In 
time  we  settled  down  to  conventional  newspaper  tradition, 
moderated  our  transports  and  eliminated  from  the  columns  of 
"Peace"  the  traces  of  our  first  fine  careless  rapture.  In  time 
our  patient  M'Clellan  was  promoted  to  the  position  of  business 
manager,  and  in  his  capable  hands  the  advertisement  revenue 
leapt  and  bounded  until,  by  the  end  of  1908,  our  weekly  loss 
on  the  production  of  the  paper  sank  to  the  negligible  figure  of 
sixty  pounds.  In  time,  too,  Bertrand  and  I  found  the  spade- 
work  distasteful,  and  from  the  beginning  of  1909  the  profes- 
sional journalists  did  more  and  the  inspired  amateurs  con- 


LORING  243 

siderably  less.  We  no  longer  said  that  nothing  was  too  great 
or  too  small  for  our  attention.  .  .  . 

Of  the  effects  of  our  noisy  dive  into  journalism  I  must 
leave  others  to  speak ;  the  time  actually  spent  in  "Peace"  office, 
"the  great  movement  of  men"  in  the  purlieus  of  Fleet  Street, 
I  have  never  had  occasion  to  regret.  The  project  was  kept 
as  secret  as  the  sailing  orders  of  the  "Hispaniola"  in  "Treasure 
Island";  and  the  out-of-work  gutter-scribes  knew  as  much 
of  our  intentions  as  Flint's  scattered  pirates  on  the  quayside 
of  Bristol.  Mayhew  waylaid  me  in  the  Club,  stammering 
with  excited  suggestions. 

"I'm  just  off  to  Budapest  as  special  correspondent  for 
the  'Wicked  World,'  he  told  me.  "If  you'll  make  it  worth 
my  while  to  stay — I  don't  mind  telling  you  there's  not  much 
you  can  teach  me  about  running  a  paper.  ..." 

And  he  sketched  the  lines  of  the  ideal  new  weekly,  abolish- 
ing our  title,  suppressing  our  propaganda  and  limning  forth 
a  hybrid  which  was  to  pay  its  way  by  white  mail  and  the 
ventilation  of  grievances.  We  were  never  to  threaten  the 
disclosure  of  ugly  indiscretions  but  to  ask  our  own  price  for 
baseless  panegyric.  "How  much  will  you  give  us  to  say  this 
about  you?"  was  to  be  our  formula,  and,  when  an  under- 
housemaid  was  discharged  for  theft  or  a  clergyman  refused  to 
celebrate  marriage  with  a  deceased  wife's  sister,  the  aggrieved 
party  was  urged  to  "write  to  the  Watchman  about  it." 

Finding  no  common  ground  between  us,  Mayhew  hurried 
away  to  Budapest  with  an  omniscient  headshake  of  misgiv- 
ing. His  place  on  my  doorstep  was  promptly  taken  by  one 
after  another  of  Sir  John  Woburn's  contract-expired  young 
men.  In  those  days  the  Press  Combine  was  descending  on 
journalism  with  the  sideways  glide  of  the  octopus.  News- 
papers throughout  England  came  one  by  one  within  reach  of 
the  waving  tentacles :  stolid,  old-fashioned  thunderers  were 
silenced  and  flung  into  the  street,  while  the  young  men  of 
promise  had  their  salaries  trebled  for  three  years  until  their 
brains  were  picked  and  themselves  could  be  tossed  aside  like  a 
sucked  orange.  They  came  to  me  boasting  of  the  Sensations 
they  had  effected — the  "Lamplighter"  treasure-hunt,  the 


244  SONIA 

"Cottage  and  Castle"  campaign  in  favour  of  sterilized  milk, 
the  "Echo"  carnation-growing  competition.  One  and  all  would 
have  made  as  epatant  a  sensation  of  universal  disarmament 
— or,  for  the  matter  of  that,  bimetallism,  Esperanto,  female 
suffrage  or  food  reform — but  a  narrow  Oxford  fastidious- 
ness, "a  toy  of  soul,  a  titillating  thing,"  set  me  shivering  at 
sight  of  their  newsbills  and  head-lines.  For  better  or  worse 
we  had  to  get  on  without  them. 

Sir  John  Woburn  himself  I  never  met — and  am  the  first 
to  regret  the  loss.  A  man  who  rose  from  nothing  to  a  bar- 
onetcy and  the  controlling  interest  in  the  august  "London  and 
Westminster  Chronicle"  is  probably  worth  meeting;  a  man 
who  cornered  public  opinion  with  his  Press  Combine  was  no 
ordinary  man;  and  to  drug  the  sense  of  a  nation,  to  render 
an  impassive  people  neurotic,  to  debauch  the  mind  of  a  gen- 
eration was  no  ordinary  task.  But,  if  I  never  met  Woburn, 
I  came  once  or  twice  in  contact  with  Gerald  Harness,  his 
principal  galvanizer  and  the  one  man  who  survived  his  chief's 
successive  'witch-hunts  for  incompetents,'  as  they  were  called, 
in  the  ranks  of  the  Press  Combine. 

The  career  of  Harness  was  without  parallel  in  English 
life;  under  Woburn's  direction  he  edited  the  "Morning  Bul- 
letin" and  the  "Evening  Dispatch" ;  in  the  office  of  the  second 
he  unravelled — Penelope  fashion — the  web  he  had  woven 
overnight  in  the  office  of  the  first.  His  was  an  amazingly 
effective  dual  personality:  in  the  "Bulletin"  he  was  a  Jingo, 
a  Tariff  Reformer,  a  Brewers'  Champion,  a  House  of  Lords 
man  and  an  Ulster  stalwart;  in  the  "Dispatch"  a  Little  Eng- 
lander,  Free-Trader,  Licensing  Bill  supporter,  House  of  Com- 
mons man  and  Home  Ruler.  The  war,  which  washed  away 
most  things,  spent  its  violence  in  vain  on  his  impervious 
figure;  he  still  fought  for  conscription  by  night  and  the  vol- 
untary system  by  day. 

"A  newspaper,"  he  told  me  when  "Peace"  was  almost 
paying  its  way  and  might  advantageously  be  acquired  by  the 
Combine,  "a  newspaper  must  give  its  readers  what  they  want. 
And  an  association  of  newspapers  must  cater  for  all  kinds 
of  readers.  That's  the  ABC  of  commercial  journalism." 


LORING  245 

"I  suppose  it  is,"  I  said.  It  would  have  been  irrelevant 
and  in  questionable  taste  to  discuss  a  journalism  that  was  not 
primarily  commercial. 

After  Mayhew  the  scrappings  of  the  Press  Combine ;  after 
them  the  real  Grub  Street  that  I  believed  to  be  long  dead. 
On  the  Monday  after  our  first  issue,  Bouverie  Street  looked 
like  the  Out-Patients'  entrance  to  a  hospital.  Bluff,  red-faced 
men  with  husky  voices  swept  me  off  my  feet  with  their  elo- 
quence and  were  sent  to  report  by-elections  in  the  provinces — 
which  in  two  cases  I  found  them  doing  with  a  wealth  of  local 
colour  in  the  upstairs  room  of  the  "White  Friars'  Tavern" 
when  I  hurried  in  there  for  a  late  luncheon ;  quick-eyed  lobby 
correspondents,  with  a  telling  "Man  to  man !  Put  your  cards 
on  the  table !"  manner,  reconstructed  the  inner  counsels  of  the 
Cabinet  with  the  accuracy  of  forecast  which  staggered  and 
continues  to  stagger  me.  And  there  were  faded  women,  no 
longer  young,  with  shabby  boots  and  carefully  mended  gloves, 
who  brought  me  sentimental  and  curiously  invertebrate  "mid- 
dle" articles — and  seemed  pathetically  unsurprised  by  the 
rejection  of  their  dog's-eared  manuscripts. 

M'Clellan,  a  pressman  first  and  a  man  some  time  after- 
wards, looked  with  lofty  contempt  on  my  gullibility  and  soft- 
ness of  heart.  It  was  not  long,  I  must  admit,  before  I  acquired 
something  of  his  own  hardness:  when  Valentine  Arden  rang 
me  up  to  say,  "One  was  wondering  whether  you  would  lunch 
with  one  at  the  Carlton  to-day?"  I  asked  brutally  whether 
the  invitation  meant  that  he  had  a  new  novel  waiting  to  be 
launched.  And,  when  casual  friends  wandered  in  and  were 
struck  with  the  beauty  of  some  new  edition  de  luxe,  I  no 
longer  harkened  to  their  "I  say,  old  man,  don't  you  think  you 
could  give  me  some  reviewing  to  do  ?"  Publishers  at  one  time 
embarrassed  me  by  threatening  to  withdraw  their  advertise- 
ments in  consequence  of  an  unfavourable  notice,  but  M'Clellan 
shook  his  head  knowingly  and  reassured  me. 

"Mr.  Oakleigh,"  he  would  say,  "ye've  no  call  to  mind  yon 
fulish  buddy.  He  kens  well — if  you  don't — that  good  reviews 
never  yet  sold  a  bad  book,  nor  bad  reviews  killed  a  good  one, 
neither." 


246  SONIA 

The  journalistic  side  of  our  work  was  the  most  interesting, 
and  I  was  sorry  to  drop  more  and  more  out  of  it  as  my  uncle's 
foreign  propaganda  developed.  One  or  other  had  to  be  sac- 
rificed, however,  and  Bertrand  could  not  run  the  Central 
Disarmament  Committee  single-handed.  One  of  the  chief 
bedrooms  at  Princes  Gardens  was  turned  into  an  office,  and 
there  we  installed  a  paid  secretary,  who,  we  decided,  must  be 
Swiss,  as  his  German  was  too  bad  for  anyone  but  a  French- 
man, and  his  French  too  bad  for  anyone  but  a  German.  His 
noncommittal  name  was  Ruhler,  his  function  to  conduct  long 
ceremonial  correspondence  with  The  Hague,  the  Internation- 
ale, Mr.  Secretary  Judd  of  the  United  States  of  America,  and 
a  host  of  less  ornate  persons  and  bodies  throughout  the  world. 

No  sooner  was  M'Clellan  in  charge  of  "Peace"  office  and 
Ruhler  of  the  Central  Committee  than  my  uncle  and  I  took 
the  road.  I  shall  say  little  of  our  lecturing  tours  for  two 
reasons :  first,  they  exactly  resembled  every  other  organiza- 
tion conducted  for  similar  purposes,  be  it  the  1909  Budget 
League  or  the  earlier  Anti-Licensing  Bill  Crusade;  secondly, 
there  can  be  hardly  a  man  or  woman  of  full  age  in  England 
this  day  who  did  not  either  attend  one  of  our  meetings  or  read 
reports  of  our  oratorical  flights  in  the  daily  press.  The 
British  Isles  were  divided  into  suitable  areas  and  submerged 
with  earnest  speakers.  Members  of  Parliament,  Liberal  can- 
didates, Nonconformist  pastors  and  unspecialized  publicists 
with  a  taste  for  improving  their  platform  style  at  someone 
else's  expense  swarmed  in  answer  to  our  call. 

The  money  poured  in  as  liberally  as  the  men.  Quakers 
from  principle,  international  bankers  from  interest,  and  a 
large,  unorganized  non-party  group  of  pacificists,  because  we 
made  their  flesh  creep,  pressed  forward,  cheque  in  hand.  I 
recall  that  one  of  our  largest  donations  came  from  Sir  Adolf 
Erckmann,  and  in  the  early  months  of  the  war  we  were  bit- 
terly criticized  for  accepting  money  from  a  Jew  of  German 
birth  for  the  propagation  of  doctrines  calculated  to  weaken 
the  national  power 'of  resistance.  I  reply  that  we  aimed  at 
weakening  in  equal  measure  the  capacity  of  all  nations  for 
mutual  destruction ;  and  in  justice  to  Erckmann,  whom  I  have 


LORING  247 

little  cause  to  love,  he  was  neither  Jew  nor  Gentile,  bond 
nor  free,  but  an  international  banker  with  everything  to  lose 
by  war. 

Hard  on  this  criticism  followed  the  question  propounded 
in  the  late  summer  of  1914  by  a  hundred  papers  and  a  hundred 
thousand  tongues,  what — if  anything — the  Disarmament 
League  had  achieved  for  all  its  pamphlets,  its  speeches  and 
its  international  propaganda.  Well,  I  think  we  killed  the 
Chauvinism  that  plunged  this  country  in  the  South  African 
War;  the  criminal  Teutonic  doctrine  that  war  is  a  fine  thing 
in  itself  and  the  necessary  purging  of  a  nation's  fatty  degenera- 
tion found  no  audience  in  these  islands:  we  won  respect  for 
The  Hague  Tribunal,  and  can  claim  some  credit  for  the  Taft 
Arbitration  Treaty  with  the  United  States.  Perhaps,  too, 
we  postponed  war  when  a  more  bellicose  people  might  have 
plunged  blood-thirstily  into  the  Balkan  embroglio.  That  we 
impaired  the  national  power  of  resistance  by  opposing  Lord 
Roberts'  national  service  propaganda,  I  resolutely  deny.  The 
Haldane  Army  Reorganization  rightly  contemplated  a  naval 
screen  behind  which  an  army  of  any  size  could  be  built  up. 
I  for  one  never  committed  the  illogicality  of  trying  to  reduce 
the  Government's  ship-building  programme  without  propor- 
tional reduction  on  the  part  of  other  countries.  Whether  I 
should  have  embarked  on  the  peace  propaganda  if  the  Govern- 
ment had  told  me  its  foreign  obligations  of  honour,  is  another 
question. 

Of  course,  if  anyone  asks  me  to  explain  away  the  present 
fact  of  war,  I  must  ask  in  my  turn  whether  a  law  against 
duelling  had  abolished  the  present  fact  of  assault  or  isolated 
murder.  Our  League  had  a  life  of  some  seven  years,  the 
Internationale  perhaps  six  times  as  long ;  both  these  organiza- 
tions were  as  powerless  to  prevent  war  as  two  thousand  years 
of  Christian  teaching. 

But  my  present  task  is  to  describe  and  not  to  defend  or 
speculate.  If  I  have  dealt  at  some  length  with  the  activities 
of  the  League,  my  excuse  must  be  that  it  monopolized  so 
much  of  my  time  between  1908  and  1910.  When  the  paper 
and  the  correspondence  bureau  and  the  lecturing  tours  had 


248  SONIA 

been  organized  and  set  on  their  feet  to  stand  alone,  we  were 
engaged  in  promoting  a  better  understanding  with  the  principal 
powers  on  the  Continent.  In  1909  my  uncle  arranged  for  an 
extended  tour  to  be  undertaken  through  the  principal  towns 
of  France,  Germany,  Austria,  Italy  and  Russia  by  representa- 
tives of  the  principal  newspapers  in  the  kingdom;  on  their 
return  at  the  end  of  six  months,  he  sent  them  to  the  United 
States,  Canada  and  certain  of  the  South  American  Republics. 
In  the  meantime,  a  return  visit  was  paid  by  a  hundred  and 
fifty  continental  journalists,  and  my  uncle  and  I  escorted 
them  round  London,  introduced  them  to  some  of  the  chief 
manufacturing  centres,  divided  them  into  groups  of  ten  and 
billeted  them  on  sympathetic  country  houses,  with  results  that 
were  occasionally  embarrassing  and  had  not  a  few  of  those 
unrehearsed  effects  which  constitute  sometimes  the  success, 
sometimes  the  disaster,  but  always  the  comic  element  in  such 
campaigns  of  strenuous  goodwill. 

The  return  visit  of  the  journalists  was  followed  by  a 
mission  of  British  Trades-Unionists  to  the  Continent;  we  re- 
ceived a  deputation  representing  Continental  Labour  in  our 
turn.  The  Bar  went  next,  and  then  a  Committee  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  then  a  sprinkling  of  the  British  Medical  Asso- 
ciation, and  lastly  a  number  of  Church  of  England  clergy 
and  Free  Church  ministers.  When  I  say  that  each  visit 
called  forth  a  return  visit,  and  that  Bertrand  and  I  bore  the 
brunt  of  entertaining  and  shepherding  our  visitors ;  when 
I  add  that  my  uncle  was  a  member  of  the  House  the  whole 
time  (and  an  assiduous  attendant),  while  I  kept  him  com- 
pany till  my  defeat  in  the  first  election  of  1910,  it  is  not  won- 
derful that  we  both  tended  to  drop  out  of  London  social  life 
and  to  lose  touch  with  all  but  our  most  intimate  friends  and 
relations. 

It  was  not  until  the  autumn  of  1909  that  I  could  find 
time  to  spend  a  fortnight  with  Loring  at  House  of  Steynes. 
I  remember  him  telling  me  that  the  Daintons  would  be  of 
the  party,  but  it  was  so  long  since  I  had  seen  them  that  I 
had  no  idea  even  whether  they  had  spent  the  intervening 
time  in  England.  Sonia's  engagement  was  broken  off  late 


LORING  249 

in  1907,  and  almost  her  first  appearance  in  public  after  the 
rupture  was  when  we  met  in  Scotland  two  years  later.  I 
gather  that  Loring,  who  was  lazily  attracted  by  her,  paid 
several  visits  to  Crowley  Court,  but  he  and  I  played  Box  and 
Cox  so  far  as  London  was  concerned.  When  I  came  back 
for  the  opening  of  Parliament,  he  moved  unobtrusively  away 
to  the  Riviera,  only  returning  in  the  height  of  the  season 
when  my  hands  were  full  of  foreign  visitors  and  my  mouth 
of  polyglot  civilities  and  explanations.  We  no  longer  met  to 
exchange  news  of  O'Rane,  because  there  was  no  news  to  ex- 
change. After  his  single  postcard  to  Summertown  from 
Mombasa,  the  silence  of  the  grave  descended  upon  him,  and 
nothing  but  my  conviction  of  his  material  indestructibility 
kept  me  from  fearing  that  he  might  in  very  truth  be  dead. 

And  then  without  warning  I  was  called  upon  to  fulfil  my 
part  of  the  old  covenant.  On  a  summer  night  in  1909  an 
invitation  sang  its  way  over  the  wires  from  Knightsbridge 
to  Curzon  Street. 

"My  compliments  to  Lord  Loring,  and,  if  he  will  dine 
with  me  to-night  at  the  Eclectic,  I  can  give  him  news  of  Mr. 
O'Rane." 

in 

"If  you  tell  me  the  little  man's  been  writing  to  you," 
were  Loring's  first  words,  "I'm  afraid  I  shan't  believe  you." 

I  helped  him  to  take  his  coat  off  and  led  the  way  into  the 
dining-room. 

"I  wouldn't  insult  your  intelligence  with  such  a  story," 
I  answered.  "It  was  infinitely  more  Raneyesque." 

"Well,  where  is  he  and  what's  he  doing?" 

"Where  did  he  say  he  was  going?  What  did  he  say  he 
would  do?"  I  asked  in  turn.  "My  dear  Jim,  Raney's  one  of 
those  people  whose  dreams  come  true.  He  told  us  he  was 
going  to  Mexico,  and  he's  gone  to  Mexico ;  he  told  us  he  was 
going  to  make  money,  and  I  gather  he's  making  the  devil  of 
a  lot." 

"When's  he  coming  home?"  Loring  asked. 


SONIA 

I  was  about  to  admit  ignorance  when  an  old  recollection 
stirred  in  my  brain  and  I  completed  the  history. 

"He  told  me  he  would  dine  with  me  in  this  room  on  the 
first  of  May  next  year.  He  will  dine — at  that  time — in  this 
place." 

Loring  helped  himself  to  plovers'  eggs  and  began  slowly 
to  remove  the  shells. 

"The  little  man's  born  out  of  time,  you  know,"  he  said, 
with  a  laugh.  "He  belongs  to  the  spacious  days  of  Elizabeth. 
I'm  glad  he's  in  luck.  God  knows,  if  ever  a  man  deserved 
it,  if  ever  there  was  poetic  justice  for  real  pluck  .  .  ."he 
left  the  sentence  eloquently  unfinished.  "Drive  ahead, 
George." 

"In  time,"  I  said,  "and  at  a  price." 

Nearly  four  years  in  the  House  of  Commons  had  made  me 
quite  shameless  in  the  matter  of  log-rolling.  I  held  Loring 
to  ransom  and  refused  to  utter  another  word  about  O'Rane 
until  he  had  promised  to  let  me  descend  on  House  of  Steynes 
with  a  party  of  ten  French  journalists  who  were  arriving  in 
England  in  two  months'  time  and  had  to  be  shown  every  side 
of  English  social  life.  It  was  a  preposterous  request  for  me 
to  make,  and  Loring  very  properly  refused  it — not  once  but 
several  times.  Only  at  the  end  of  a  long  and — if  I  may  say 
so — well  chosen  dinner,  when  I  declined  even  to  mention 
O'Rane's  name,  did  he  show  a  willingness  to  compromise. 

"Have  it  your  own  way!"  he  exclaimed  impatiently.  "I 
shan't  be  there,  though." 

"My  dear  Jim,  unless  you're  there  from  start  to  finish " 

"This  is  sheer  blackmail !"  he  cried. 

"As  you  will,"  I  answered,  folding  my  arms  obstinately. 

"You're  a  dirty  dog,  George,"  he  answered,  with  slow 
scorn.  "I  suppose  I  shall  have  to  promise,  though." 

Before  telling  my  tale,  I  had  to  explain  how  it  had  reached 
me.  The  previous  evening  had  been  devoted  to  one  of  many 
all-night  sittings  on  the  interminable  1909  Budget.  I  walked 
home  between  five  and  six  o'clock  in  the  morning,  as  the 
returning  market-carts  rumbled  sleepily  westward  along 
Knightsbridge,  and  belated  revellers  in  vivid  dresses  and  with 


LORING  251 

tired,  white  faces  flashed  by  in  taxis  and  private  cars.  My 
head  was  aching,  my  lungs  seemed  charged  with  the  poisoned 
air  of  the  House,  and  I  was  chilled  to  the  marrow  of  my 
bones ;  cursing  a  factious  Opposition,  I  had  reached  the  door 
of  my  uncle's  house  in  Princes  Gardens  and  was  fumbling 
for  my  latch-key,  when  I  noticed  a  man  sitting  on  the  steps 
with  his  head  on  his  knees  and  his  hands  clasped  round  his 
legs.  He  awoke  as  I  tried  to  squeeze  by  him,  rubbed  his  eyes, 
yawned,  gazed  round  him,  and  then  scrambled  stiffly  to  his 
feet. 

"Maybe  you're  Mr.  George  Oakleigh?"  he  asked,  with  an 
American  intonation  almost  too  strong  to  be  natural.  And 
then,  when  I  bowed  in  assent,  "Gee,  but  it's  cold  waiting. 
D'ye  think  I  could  come  in  for  a  piece  ?  I've  been  sitting  here 
since  ten  last  night." 

My  first  desire  was  for  a  hot  bath,  my  second  for  bed. 
Both  points  were  clearly  propounded  to  the  American. 

"Guess  that'll  keep,"  he  answered  easily.  "I've  a  message 
from  your  friend  David  O'Rane."  He  felt  in  his  pocket  and 
produced  a  card  with  the  name  "James  Morris."  and  some 
address  that  I  have  forgotten  in  Mexico  City.  On  the  back 
was  pencilled,  "Please  give  bearer  any  assistance  he  may 
require.  D.  O'R." 

"What  can  I  do  for  you,  Mr.  Morris  ?"  I  asked  unenthusi- 
astically, fingering  the  card  and  then  glancing  at  my  watch. 

"A  warm  room  and  something  to  eat,"  he  answered,  with 
a  shiver.  "My  name's  not  Morris,  by  the  way,  but  it'll 
serve.  And  I'm  not  a  native  of  Mexico,  but  that'll  serve. 
My  folk  come  from  this  side  of  the  water,  but  they're  not 
proud  of  me  for  some  reason.  By  the  same  token,  I  shan't 
keep  you  long  from  your  bath.  I'm  known  in  Knightsbridge. 
'Late  to  bed  and  early  to  rise,  Is  the  rule  for  Knightsbridge, 
if  you're  wise.'  All  right,  I'm  not  jagged." 

Mr.  Morris's  manner  was  so  unprepossessing  that  nothing 
but  my  regard  for  O'Rane  would  have  induced  me  to  admit 
him  to  the  house  at  this — or  any — hour.  In  appearance,  the 
man  was  of  medium  size  with  powerful  hands  and  thin,  riding 
legs.  His  hair  and  skin  were  fair,  his  eyes  grey,  and  his 


252  SONIA 

features  regular  though  weak.  All  pretension  to  good  looks, 
however,  was  ruined  by  his  expression,  which-  was  an  un- 
attractive blend  of  cunning  and  effrontery.  His  lower  lip  shot 
out  at  the  end  of  a  sentence,  as  though  to  conceal  the  weak 
line  of  his  chin:  deep  furrows  from  nose  to  mouth  formed 
themselves  into  a  perpetual  sneer;  the  pale  eyes  were  half 
hidden  under  their  insolent,  drooping  lids.  And  with  it  all 
there  was  something  pitiful  about  the  man:  he  was  so  young, 
not  more  than  two  and  twenty ;  the  recklessness  was  so  crude, 
the  frailty  of  character  so  patent.  He  seemed  like  a  highly  , 
strung  child  who  had  been  bullied  into  obstinacy  and  violence 
by  an  unsympathetic  nurse.  And  that,  I  believe,  was  in  fact 
one  part  of  his  history. 

"Come  in,  Mr.  Morris,"  I  said,  opening  the  door.  "I 
shall  be  glad  to  hear  any  news  of  O'Rane  and  to  do  anything 
I  can  for  a  friend  of  his." 

"A  name  to  conjure  with,  seemingly,"  said  Morris,  with  a 
malicious  smile. 

"O'Rane's?" 

"I  reckon  so.  You'll  admit  you  didn't  precisely  freeze 
on  to  me  at  first  sight.  However,  no  ill  feeling." 

"It  was  an  unusual  hour  for  a  call,"  I  replied. 

"And  I  looked  an  unusual  sort  of  a  customer,  eh?  Well, 
never  mind.  What's  this?  Cheese?  I  can  do  with  some  of 
that.  No  whiskey !  I  don't  use  spirits  nowadays,  not  since  I 
met  O'Rane." 

We  sat  in  silence  while  he  munched  bread  and  cheese, 
contentedly  glancing  round  the  room  at  the  pictures  or,  when 
he  thought  I  was  not  looking,  letting  his  eyes  rest  on  me. 
The  curtains  were  still  drawn,  and  the  yellow  light  from  the 
chandelier,  feeble  by  contrast  with  the  cold,  diamond  clarity 
of  the  dawn  outside,  lent  an  added  element  of  the  fantastic 
to  our  meeting.  I  lit  a  cigar,  settled  wearily  into  my  chair 
and  told  him  not  to  hurry  himself. 

"Well,  start  at  the  beginning,"  he  said  at  length,  "I  met 
him  eighteen  months  ago  in  Tomlinson's  Saloon,  Acacia 
Avenue,  Mexico  City.  He  hadn't  been  in  the  country  more 
than  a  few  days — landed  with  five  thousand  dollars  he'd 


LORING  253 

made  out  Africa  way  and  was  looking  for  likely  oil  propo- 
sitions. I  was  with  the  Central  Syndicate  in  those  days.  No 
need  to  ask  why  I  was  in  the  accursed  country  at  all,  or  what 
I  was  doing.  The  Syndicate  made  me  cashier  in  their  inno- 
cence of  heart,  and,  though  I  wasn't  overpaid,  their  book- 
keeping left  loopholes  for  a  man  of  enterprise.  I  used  those 
loopholes  some.  By  the  time  I  met  O'Rane,  the  Syndicate 
had  lent  me  4000  dollars — more'n  eight  hundred  pounds — 
without  knowing  it.  We  weren't  in  sight  of  an  audit,  I'd 
got  months  to  doctor  the  entries,  it  was  roses  all  the  way." 
Truculently  he  thrust  forward  his  lower  lip,  every  inch  of 
him  the  bragging  schoolboy.  "Then — I  had  ninety  minutes' 
warning — the  Syndicate  started  in  for  amalgamation  with  the 
Southern  Combine,  the  accountants  rolled  up  for  the  valua- 
tion— and  I  thought  Mexico  City  wasn't  good  for  my  health." 

He  paused  dramatically,  finished  his  soda  water  and  put 
down  the  empty  glass. 

"That's  when  I  met  O'Rane,"  he  went  on.  "There  wasn't 
much  packing  or  leave-taking  to  get  through.  I  booked  ex- 
press for  New  Orleans  and  turned  into  Tomlinson's  till  it 
was  time  to  get  under  way  for  the  depot.  That's  where  they 
took  me — I  was  a  fool  to  run  before  evening,  it  was  bound  to 
arouse  suspicion.  I'd  been  talking  to  O'Rane  a  matter  of 
half  an  hour — oil  prospects  and  such  like — when  I  felt  a 
hand  on  my  shoulder  and  a  shiver  down  my  spine." 

He  paused  again  and  helped  himself  to  a  cigar. 

"To  this  day  I  don't  know  why  he  did  it,"  he  resumed, 
"but  I'd  not  been  four  and  twenty  hours  in  my  cell  when  they 
told  me  there  was  a  visitor  wanting  to  speak  with  me. 

"  'Tell  him  I'm  only  at  home  on  the  sixth  Friday  of  the 
month,'  I  said. 

"/  didn't  want  any  durned  visitors.  He  came  in,  though 
— leastways  he  came  to  the  door  and  peeked  through  the 
grille. 

"  'Morning,'  says  he,  'you  remember  we  met  in  Tomlin- 
son's yesterday.  My  name's  O'Rane.' 

'  'I've  not  got  a  card,'  says  I,  'but  you'll  find  full  par- 
ticulars in  the  book  upstairs.' 


254  SONIA 

"I  wasn't  out  to  be  civil  and  I  thought  he'd  taken  the 
hint  and  cleared.  He  was  still  at  the  grille,  though,  next  time 
I  looked  up. 

"'Which  college  were  you?'  he  asks  after  a  bit — for  all 
the  world  as  if  we  were  still  drinking  cocktails  in  Tomlinson's. 
College!  If  he'd  asked  my  views  on  Bacon  and  Shakes- 
peare .  .  . 

"  'What  the  hell's  that  to  you?'  I  blazed  out. 

"  'It  was  Merton  or  Corpus,  but  I  can't  remember  which,' 
he  says. 

"I  didn't  say  anything  to  that. 

"  'I  was  at  the  House,'  he  went  on.  'I  wanted  to  see  if 
I  couldn't  give  you  a  lift  up.  What's  the  amount  in  dispute?' 

"  'Four  thousand,'  I  answered  and  heard  him  whistle. 

"'Pounds?'  he  asks. 

"  'No  such  luck,'  I  said.  'Dollars.'  I  mean,  to  be  lagged 
for  that  .  .  . 

"Believe  me  or  not,  that  man  O'Rane  sighed  with  relief. 

"  'I  can  manage  that,'  he  said.    'So  long.' 

"Next  morning  they  let  me  out.  There  may  have  been 
more  surprised  men  in  Mexico  City,  but,  if  there  were,  I  didn't 
meet  'em.  How  he  squared  the  Syndicate  and  the  officials  and 
the  whole  durned  Criminal  Code  of  Mexico,  I  don't  know. 
I  didn't  ask.  I  had  a  bath  and  a  shave  at  his  hotel,  then  he 
gave  me  breakfast,  then  a  cigar,  and  then  we  put  up  our 
feet  and  talked. 

"  'You'd  better  quit  Mexico  City  for  a  piece,'  he  began. 

"I  nodded.    The  same  great  thought  had  occurred  to  me. 

"  'I'm  out  for  oil,'  he  went  on,  'd'you  care  to  come  ?' 

"  'D'you  care  about  having  me  ?'  I  suggested. 

"  'I  shouldn't  have  asked  you  if  I  didn't,'  he  says. 

"  'I'd  look  for  oil  in  hell  for  you,'  I  said. 

"We  shook  on  that. 

"  'We  shall  rough  it  some,'  he  warned  me.  'Better  hear 
the  terms  first.  Item  one:  I'll  never  ask  you  to  do  a  thing 
I  won't  do  myself.' 

"'Done!'  I  said. 

"  'Then  that's  about  all,'  says  he,  taking  his  feet  off  the 


LORING  255: 

table  and  looking  at  his  watch.  'Half  profits  for  each,  and 
I'm  to  say  when  the  proposition's  worked  out.'  " 

Mr.  James  Morris,  as  he  chose  to  call  himself,  late  of 
Merton  (or  Corpus  Christi)  College,  Oxford,  knocked  the  ash 
off  his  cigar  and  looked  round  the  library. 

"You've  not  got  such  a  thing  as  a  large  scale  map  of 
Mexico,  have  you?"  he  asked.  "Well,  it  doesn't  matter.  I 
guess  the  places  would  mostly  be  only  names  to  you.  We 
started  West — Gonsalo  way — and  we  worked  some.  Living 
Springs  was  our  first  success,  and  we  let  the  Southern  Combine 
have  an  option  on  that  so  as  we  could  buy  plant  for  the  St. 
Esmond  concession,  and  six  months'  working  of  St.  Esmond 
gave  us  capital  to  buy  out  the  Gonsalo  Development  Syndicate 
and  round  off  our  holding.  Since  then  we've  struck  oil  at 
Pica,  Melange  and  Long  Valley." 

He  paused  considerately  to  let  the  unfamiliar  names  sink 
into  my  memory. 

"In  eighteen  months  we've  never  looked  back,"  he  went 
on,  with  rising  enthusiasm.  "Every  dollar  we  made  went 
back  to  the  business — barring  what  we  needed  to  live  on, 
and  that  was  mostly  bread,  meat  and  tobacco,  with  an  occa- 
sional new  pair  of  boots  or  breeches  to  keep  us  decent.  And 
then  three  months  ago  we  started  prospecting  in  new  territory 
— I  can't  tell  you  where  it  is,  'cos  we're  still  negotiating.  I 
found  the  oil,  and  O'Rane  did  the  rest.  He  thinks  it's  the 
richest  thing  we've  ever  struck  and  he's  going  to  collar  the 
proposition.  The  territory's  about  the  size  of  Scotland,  and 
the  concession  will  run  to  anything  between  one  and  two 
million  dollars." 

He  pulled  an  envelope  from  his  pocket  and  scribbled  some 
figures  on  the  back. 

"We're  selling  our  shirts  to  get  it,"  he  told  me.  "O'Rane 
never  borrows  money,  but  he's  sent  me  over  here  to  float  a 
company  to  buy  everything  we've  found  or  made  in  the  last 
year  and  a  half.  He  couldn't  come  himself:  the  sweepings 
of  God's  universe  that  we  call  our  labour  would  be  drunk  by 
ten  and  knifing  each  other  by  ten-thirty  without  him  to  get 
a  cinch  on  'em.  If  I  bring  it  off,  we  shall  have  enough  for 


256  SONIA 

the  concession.  Maybe  it  won't  pan  out  as  rich  as  we  hope, 
and  then  we  start  again  at  the  bottom.  That's  the  sort  of 
risk  he  loves  taking.  That's — that's  just  O'Rane.  Maybe 
he's  right,  and  there's  oil  enough  to  flood  Sahara.  Put  the 
concession  at  a  million  dollars  and  the  average  yield  at  ten  per 
cent  on  your  capital.  A  hundred  thousand  dollars  per  anuum 
— gross.  Take  half  of  that  away  for  working  expenses — 
fifty  thousand,  net.  Half  profits  on  that,  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  a  year — £5000  for  each  of  us. 

"O'Rane  says  he'll  be  satisfied  with  that.  When  we 
touch  total  net  profit  of  fifty  thousand  dollars,  he'll  sell  out  or 
turn  the  proposition  over  to  a  company.  Then  he'll  come 
back  to  England  and  go  into  Parliament  and  cut  a  dash.  And 
I — well,  I'll  have  to  say  good-bye  to  him,  I  guess." 

He  stopped  abruptly  as  though  there  were  much  more  that 
he  would  have  liked  to  say.  We  sat  smoking  in  silence  for 
a  few  moments.  Morris's  raw,  ill-regulated  susceptibilities 
had  made  him  an  easy  victim  to  Raney's  personality :  perhaps 
he  was  already  wondering  what  to  do  when  the  strange 
partnership  dissolved,  and  Raney  returned  alone — perhaps  he 
recognized  his  own  inability  to  continue  the  work  single- 
handed  when  the  inspiration  and  driving  force  were  removed : 
perhaps,  as  his  eyes  glanced  out  on  the  silence  and  desolation 
of  Knightsbridge,  he  was  weighing  the  possibility  of  starting 
afresh  and  making  a  new  home  for  himself  in  a  Western 
capital. 

For  myself,  I  had  no  other  thought  than  that  I  should 
have  liked  a  man  to  speak  of  me  as  Morris  had  spoken  of 
O'Rane.  I  should  have  welcomed  a  little  of  his  humanity, 
his  singleness  of  heart  and  his  unshakeable  faith  in  himself. 
While  he  worked  in  shirt  and  trousers  or  ventured  his  last 
hundreds  on  an  admitted  scamp  or  staked  everything  he  had 
won  on  the  chance  o'f  greater  winnings,  I  was  sitting  tired 
and  chilled  by  my  late  hours  at  the  House,  ruling  Morris  out 
from  my  list  of  desirable  acquaintances  on  the  ground  that  I 
disliked  his  manner  and  appearance,  possibly  even  wondering 
if  he  were  to  be  trusted  to  put  down  the  silver  cigar  cutter 
before  he  left.  .  .  . 


LORING  257 

"Is  there  anything  I  can  do  for  you,  Morris?"  I  asked 
with  a  sudden  shock  of  penitence  at  my  own  insular  prejudice. 

He  noticed  that  I  had  dropped  the  'Mister'  and  seemed 
gratified. 

"Guess  not,  thanks,"  he  answered,  yawning  and  stretching 
himself.  "I've  got  the  proposition  pretty  nigh  fixed.  I'll 
take  any  message  you  like  to  send  O'Rane.  He  sent  love  to 
everybody  and  would  like  to  hear  from  you.  There's  not 
much  time  or  accommodation  for  writing  out  there.  Our  first 
camp  was  two  blankets,  a  packing  case  and  a  banjo.  When 
I  went  down  with  fever  he  gave  me  ragtime  back-numbers 
and  stories  from  the  'Earthly  Paradise.'  The  man  could  make 
his  pile  doing  memory  stunts  at  a  dime  show.  God!  if  I 
hadn't  been  so  weak  I  could  have  laughed  some.  William 
Morris  in  Central  America,  in  a  bell  tent  bunged  up  with  oil 
samples  and  quinine  bottles."  He  glanced  round  the  room 
at  the  shining  mahogany  furniture,  and  his  toe  tested  the 
thickness  of  the  carpet.  "Well,  good-bye,"  he  said.  "I'm 
pleased  to  have  met  you." 

As  he  stood  with  outstretched  hand,  there  was  little  enough 
of  the  American  about  him  for  all  his  laboured  transat- 
lanticisms. 

"Are  you  and  he  all  alone  ?"  I  asked. 

"God!  no.  Not  now.  We've  got  the  off-scourings  of 
every  nation  and  most  of  the  saloons  of  Mexico  City  working 
for  us.  They're  a  dandy  lot,  but  it's  pretty  to  see  O'Rane 
handling  them.  If  ever  you  lose  your  faith  in  human  nature, 
come  and  see  him  licking  half-castes  and  Gringoes  into  shape. 
They'd  string  up  old  man  Diaz  and  make  O'Rane  president 
for  the  asking.  Well,  I  must  be  going." 

"Look  here,"  I  said,  as  we  shook  hands  again,  "you  must 
come  and  dine  with  me " 

He  stopped  me  with  a  shake  of  the  head. 

"Thanks.  I  don't  show  up  in  the  West  End  by  day.  I 
spend  my  mornings  down  town — Mincing  Lane  way — and 
then  I  retire  up  stage.  'Sides,  I'm  due  to  sail  on  Friday  if  I 
can  get  fixed  by  then." 


258  SONIA 

I  walked  with  him  to  the  front  door  and  watched  him 
appreciatively  sniffing  the  early  morning  air. 

"Good  old  London !"  he  exclaimed,  and  then  with  a  return 
of  his  former  sneering  arrogance,  "D'you  ever  see  X ?" 

The  name  he  mentioned  was  borne  by  a  well-known  Per- 
manent Under-Secretary  in  one  of  the  Government  offices. 
He  was  a  regular  visitor  at  my  uncle's  house. 

"And  his  wife?"  Morris  pursued.  "Well,  next  time  you 
run  across  her,  just  tell  her  that  all's  well  in  the  New  World. 
Good-bye." 

When  I  had  finished  my  story,  Loring  threw  away  the 
stump  of  his  cigar  and  stretched  himself. 

"As  I  told  you  earlier  in  the  evening,"  he  observed,  "the 
little  man  has  been  born  about  three  centuries  too  late." 


IV 

I  always  regarded  Loring  as  the  possessor  of  one  sterling 
quality.  Selfish  he  might  be,  or  indolent,  or  inconsiderate, 
an  old  maid  in  his  fussy  little  rules  of  everyday  existence  and 
an  incurable  romantic  in  his  attitude  to  the  life  of  the  twentieth 
century.  With  it  all  he  was  a  man  of  his  word.  Under  black- 
mail he  had  pledged  himself  to  entertain  my  French  journal- 
ists, and  when  the  time  came  for  fulfilling  the  pledge  he 
smiled  welcome  on  them  in  the  hall  of  House  of  Steynes. 

Indeed,  so  admirable  was  his  manner  that  I  retired  unre- 
luctantly  from  competition.  Raney's  messenger,  the  self-styled 
"James  Morris,"  had  called  on  me  in  June;  the  evangelists 
of  Universal  Brotherhood  arrived  in  July,  and  for  more 
sweltering  weeks  than  I  like  to  count,  mine  was  the  privilege 
of  giving  them  tea  and  speeches  on  the  Terrace,  escorting 
them  in  unsuitable  clothes  to  Goodwood  and  more  speeches 
and  misinforming  them  on  subjects  of  historical  interest  in 
Westminster  Abbey  and  St.  Paul's — a  course  which  afforded 
them  opportunity  of  correcting  me  in  further  speeches,  to  the 
sluggish  perplexity  of  the  vergers. 

In  August,  the  hoarse,  limp  mass  of  us  repaired  to  Euston 


LORING  259 

and  House  of  Steynes.  Old  Lady  Loring  was,  perhaps  for- 
tunately, with  Amy  at  Baden-Baden,  though  four  days  can  be 
interminably  long  even  in  a  bachelor  party.  Our  host,  how- 
ever, put  his  heart  into  the  work;  with  a  grim  thoroughness 
we  visited  Holyrood  and  Arthur's  Seat,  the  Highlands  and 
Islands  and  dismissed  our  guests  fraternally  with  the  clang  ot 
Clyde  hammers  resounding  in  their  ears  and  an  obstinate 
conviction  that  they  had  enjoyed  themselves. 

"And  now,"  said  Loring  to  my  uncle  as  we  walked  out  of 
the  Waverley  Station,  "now  for  an  All-British  holiday.  You 
can  stay  another  week,  sir?  No  women  till  my  mother  comes 
back — I  thought  that  would  appeal  to  you.  You,  George? 
Then  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  find  a  telegraph  office  and  in- 
vite everybody  we  can  think  of." 

Two  days  later,  by  persuasion  on  our  part  and  perjury 
on  theirs,  we  had  snatched  a  dozen  men  from  the  same  number 
of  protesting  hostesses.  Tom  Dainton  was  on  his  honey- 
moon— surely  the  least  romantic  of  its  kind  for  anyone  who 
knew  Tom  or  could  imagine  an  ox-eyed  wife  yet  more  silent 
than  himself ! — but  Sam  came  up  to  say  good-bye  before  sail- 
ing for  India  with  his  regiment,  and  we  had  the  luck  to  catch 
Mayhew  on  leave  from  Budapest.  Summertown  escaped  the 
vigilance  of  his  Colonel  for  half  the  time,  and  Arden  tele- 
graphed at  some  expense:  "One  resents  these  short  notices 
but  if  one  can  be  assured  that  the  Waterloo  brandy  is  not  yet 
finished  one  may  perhaps  sacrifice  oneself  for  one's  friends 
but  one  cannot  allow  ones'  acceptance  to  be  taken  as  establish- 
ing a  precedent." 

The  party  was  a  rare  antidote  for  anyone  suffering  from 
too  much  House  of  Commons  and  general  propaganda.  We 
bathed  and  lay  about  in  long  chairs  and  bathed  again  and 
enjoyed  the  delicious,  lazy  conversation  wherein  the  speakers 
fall  half  asleep  between  the  drawling  sentences,  and  nobody 
makes  epigrams  or  debating  points,  and  nothing  matters.  Val- 
entine Arden,  exquisite,  precious  and  inscrutable  as  ever,  would 
unbend  from  time  to  time  and  speak  as  though  he  no  longer 
feared  a  charge  of  enthusiasm.  His  books  were  attracting  con- 
siderable attention  with  their  sparkle  and  passionless  satire, 


26o  SONIA 

and  his  talk  left  the  impression  on  my  mind  that  for  all  his 
youth  the  satire  was  not  wholly  cheap  effect. 

He  analysed  contemporary  literature  with  the  eyes  of  a 
man  whose  profession  is  to  study  technique,  emphasizing  the 
essentially  derivative  character  of  modern  writing  with  its 
sex  psychology  borrowed  from  France,  its  Pottery  School  and 
Dartmoor  School  imitating  Hardy,  its  intensive  vision  applied 
by  the  admirers  of  James.  His  final  judgement  was  depress- 
ing, for  there  was  nothing  new  except  Wells  and  Conrad  and 
little  that  was  good.  We  were  too  much  obsessed  by  our  en- 
vironment to  produce  or  care  for  great  books.  Nothing  was 
worth  achieving  or  describing,  unless  it  were  an  invitation  to 
dine  with  royalty  or  a  treatise  on  sexual  pathology. 

The  childlike  preoccupation  of  grown  men  and  women 
in  the  infinite  littleness  of  social  life  was  an  irresistible  mark 
for  the  satire  of  a  man  whose  deliberate  and  effective  pose 
was  to  exaggerate  the  fastidious  artificiality  of  his  generation. 
Valentine  Arden  had  a  courageous  and  altogether  scornful 
soul.  I  have  seen  him  enter  the  Ritz,  thin  and  white  as  an 
Aubrey  Beardsley  pierrot,  in  a  black  coat  lined  with  helio- 
trope silk.  I  have  watched  strong-minded  young  women 
humbling  themselves  before  him  because  they  knew  his  in- 
difference to  their  charms,  and  I  have  marked  the  haughtiest 
of  nervous  hostesses  exerting  themselves  to  secure  his  comfort. 
In  his  early  days  no  man  of  my  time  was  so  successful  in  get- 
ting taken  at  his  own  valuation.  Later  when  his  position  was 
assured,  half  London  was  civil  in  the  expectation  of  appearing 
in  his  next  book ;  the  other  half  in  hopes  of  being  left  out. 

Mayhew's  riotous  fancy  was  little  subdued  by  twelve 
months  in  a  foreign  capital  devoted  to  special  correspondence 
by  day  and  the  study  of  Austro-Hungary's  myriad  tongues  by 
night.  He  was  hardly  less  omniscient  than  in  the  old  Fleet 
Street  days  when  he  dined  with  me  at  the  Eclectic  and  pre- 
faced preposterous  stories  with  "The  Prime  Minister  said  to 
me  in  the  Lobby  only  this  afternoon,  'My  dear  Mayhew,  I 
don't  want  this  to  go  any  further,  but  .  .  .'"  I  remember  the 
late  absorption  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  left  him  tolerably 
sagacious. 


LORING  261 

"I  don't  think  people  in  this  country  realize  what  a  near 
thing  it  was,"  he  said,  with  a  grave  shake  of  the  head.  "It's 
a  diplomatic  triumph  for  the  old  Emperor,  but  he'd  better  not 
try  to  repeat  it.  Russia's  got  a  long  memory.  At  present  she's 
recovering  slowly  from  the  Japanese  War  and  wasn't  equal 
to  taking  on  Austria  and  Germany  at  the  same  time.  Devil 
of  it  is,  you  never  know  where  the  thing'll  stop.  Russia  brings 
in  France,  France  may  bring  us  in.  ...  It's  a  great  pity 
someone  can't  hold  the  Balkans  under  the  sea  for  five  minutes." 

I  have  a  fairly  long  memory,  and  five  years  later  I  quoted 
Mayhew's  words  to  him.  He  was  honest  enough  to  say  that 
he  had  forgotten  them  and  that  the  two  Balkan  wars  had 
converted  him  to  my  own  belief  that  a  European  war  was  too 
big  a  thing  for  any  power  to  begin. 

House  of  Steynes  was  an  asylum  from  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, but  we  could  not  keep  altogether  free  from  politics. 
No  one  who  remembers  the  1909  Session  will  be  surprised.  I 
believe  my  record  for  divisions  under  the  famous  Budget  was 
equalled  by  two  men  and  beaten  by  three.  It  was  the  great 
fight  of  our  time.  I  had  been  getting  a  bad  name  with  the 
Whips,  and  observant  eyes  on  the  opposite  side  were  already 
marking  me  down  a  possible  renegade.  That  wicked  old  wire- 
puller, the  Duchess  of  Ross,  on  ten  minutes'  acquaintance  at  a 
Foreign  Office  reception  invited  me  to  stay  at  Herrig  Castle 
to  complete  the  conversion.  I  would  have  accepted  in  a  spirit 
of  adventure  had  it  not  been  for  the  Budget;  but  any  man 
with  one  drop  of  Radical  blood  in  his  veins  felt,  as  I  did,  that 
Democracy  was  fighting  for  its  life. 

I  shall  not  revive  the  old  battle  that  we  fought  in  the 
House  and  re  fought  with  Loring.  I  only  allude  to  it  because 
of  the  change  that  controversy  wrought  in  his  life,  a  change 
he  was  already  beginning  resignedly  to  contemplate. 

"There  is  good  in  all  things,  even  your  Budget,"  he  told, 
my  uncle  ironically.  "One  irresponsible,  hereditary  legis- 
lator will  be  able  to  retire  with  dignity." 

"Our  whole  democratic  development  for  fifty  years  is 
based  on  the  financial  monopoly  of  the  Commons,"  Bertrand 
answered. 


262  SONIA 

To  my  mind  the  saddest  effect  of  political  life  is  the 
ease  with  which  even  considerable  intellects  come  to  live  by 
catch-phrases. 

"That's  little  recommendation  in  my  eyes,  sir,"  Loring 
answered.  "Come!  Come!  Let's  die  fighting!  If  we  let 
this  through — to  the  tune  of  the  Land  Song — there's  nothing 
you  won't  be  able  to  pass  as  a  Money  Bill.  And  there's  always 
the  chance  that  the  country  may  support  us." 

"And  you'd  make  every  future  Budget  fight  for  its  life 
like  this  one — against  an  irresponsible  House  ?" 

Not  lightly  did  my  uncle  forget  his  all-night  sittings  and 
endless  perambulations  through  the  lobbies. 

"If  you  choose  to  call  us  irresponsible,"  said  Loring,  with 
a  shrug  of  the  shoulders.  "I  submit  there's  still  room  for  a 
long  view,  a  patience,  an  aloofness  from  the  heated  quarrel 
of  the  moment.  Tradition  should  be  represented,  sir — as  it's 
represented  by  college  Fellows  or  Benchers " 

"The  two  most  reactionary,  uncontrolled,  mediaeval-minded 
bodies  you  could  have  chosen,"  my  uncle  commented  in  one 
hurried  breath. 

"And  aren't  you  proud  of  them  both,  sir?"  Loring  flashed 
back.  "As  they  were  and  are  and  always  will  be?  Aren't 
you  proud  to  be  a  T.C.D.  man  and  a  member  of  the  Inner 
Temple?" 

"No !"  said  Bertrand  contemptuously. 

"Your  hand  on  your  heart,  sir  ?"  Loring  persisted. 

My  uncle  laughed  and  made  no  reply. 

When  the  Budget  went  to  the  Lords,  Loring  voted  for  its 
rejection.  When  the  Parliament  Bill  was  presented,  he  con- 
tinued his  opposition ;  not  even  the  threat  of  five  hundred  new 
creations  shook  his  consistency.  I  sometimes  think  his  whole 
life  was  symbolized  by  his  struggle  in  the  dwindling  ranks  of 
the  "Die  Hards."  His  last  words — "This  is  the  appeal  I  make 
to  your  Lordships.  It  is  unlikely  that  I  shall  have  the  honour 
again  to  address  your  Lordships'  House.  .  .  ." — were  char- 
acteristic of  his  refusal  to  compromise  with  modernity.  When 
the  Parliament  Bill  secured  its  final  reading,  Loring  left  the 
House  of  Lords  for  ever. 


LORING  263 

After  the  rest  of  the  party  was  dispersed  I  stayed  on  for 
a  couple  of  days  until  Lady  Loring  and  Amy  arrived.  One 
of  the  two  days  was  Loring's  birthday,  and  I  found  him  in  a 
state  of  altogether  ridiculous  depression  when  we  met  after 
breakfast. 

"Twenty-nine!"  he  exclaimed  in  acknowledgement  of  my 
good  wishes.  "It's  the  devil  of  an  age,  George." 

"Not  for  a  confirmed  pessimist,"  I  said.  "Every  hour 
brings  release  nearer." 

"I  shall  have  to  get  married,  you  know,"  he  observed  re- 
flectively. 

"As  one  goes  misere  in  Nap?"  I  inquired. 

He  was  really  thinking  aloud  and  quite  properly  ignored 
my  question. 

"I  suppose  it's  the  right  thing  to  do,"  he  said.  "The 
Cardinal's  my  heir  at  present,  and  after  him  there's  no  one  to 
succeed.  George,  it  must  be  a  damned  uncomfortable  state,  in 
spite  of  the  novelists.  Think  of  having  a  woman  always  living 
with  you " 

"According  to  the  modern  novelists,"  I  said,  "they  always 
live  with  someone  else." 

"Well,  even  that  seems  uncomfortable." 

"For  you  or  the  other  man?  It  depends  on  the  wife,  and 
in  any  case  I  don't  know  that  you  need  consider  him  except 
on  broad  humanitarian  principles.  Jim,  if  I  may  advise  you, 
don't  be  glamoured  by  the  idea  of  being  faithful  to  one  woman 
all  your  life.  You  have  formed  certain  habits " 

"My  dear  George,  don't  rub  it  in !  I  don't  envy  the  woman 
who  marries  me.  But  I'm  not  likely  to  grow  more  domesti- 
cated by  remaining  a  bachelor." 

"Have  you  anyone  in  mind?"  I  asked,  as  I  poured  myself 
out  a  cup  of  tea. 

"Several,"  he  answered  vaguely. 

"Then  why  not  leave  it  at  that  ?"  I  suggested. 

When  Amy  arrived  the  following  day  I  found  her  alone 
in  the  morning-room  and  asked  whether  she  was  responsible 
for  turning  her  brother's  thoughts  into  this  channel.  For 


264  SONIA 

answer  she  frowned  slightly  and  brushed  the  curls  away  from 
her  forehead. 

"In  other  words,  you  don't  approve  of  her?"  I  said. 

"I  approve  of  anyone  Jim  marries,"  she  replied,  with  a 
touch  of  loyal  defiance.  "That  doesn't  mean  I  shan't  do  all  I 
can  to  prevent  a  great  mistake  being  made." 

"It  would  simplify  things  enormously,"  I  observed,  "if  I 
knew  who  was  being  discussed." 

"There  are  two  of  them.  You  must  learn  to  use  your 
eyes,  George." 

"But  till  a  fortnight  ago  I  hadn't  seen  Jim  for  years." 

"Well,  if  you  stay  here  another  fortnight You're  not 

really  going  to-morrow,  are  you  ?" 

"I'll  stay  a  week  to  save  Jim  from  bigamy,"  I  said. 

"Oh,  it  isn't  that."  She  walked  over  to  the  writing-table 
and  came  back  with  a  sheet  of  paper  containing  the  names  of 
the  following  day's  party.  "He  wants  to  marry  one  of  them, 
and  I  want  him  to  marry  the  other." 

I  glanced  at  the  list,  and  "Miss  Hunter-Oakleigh"  caught 
my  eye. 

"Violet's  one,"  I  said.  Then  I  observed  another  name  and 
handed  the  sheet  back  to  Amy.  "Thanks.  I  have  seen  indi- 
cations." 

Amy  fretted  the  paper  with  her  fingers. 

"I  haven't  a  word  against  Sonia,"  she  said.  "If  Jim 
marries  her,  I — all  of  us,  mother  and  I  and  everybody — shall 
try  to  make  a  success  of  it."  She  stopped,  and  shook  her  head 
with  misgiving.  "I'm  sure  it's  a  mistake,  though.  She's  got 
very  little  heart,  and  Jim's  nothing  like  brutal  enough  to  keep 
her  in  order.  And  I'm  afraid  he'll  find  she's  got  nothing  but 
her  looks.  That's  what's  attracted  him.  Violet's  pretty 

enough,  Heaven  knows,  but  Sonia "  She  shrugged  her 

shoulders  helplessly.  "I  can  understand  any  man  being  mad 
about  her.  And  she  knows  it,  and  expects  men  to  go  mad 
about  her.  I  don't  think  she'll  be  content  with  one  man's  de- 
votion. Someone  will  come  along.  .  .  .  George,  I  hate  to 
talk  like  this,  but  a  lioness  and  her  cub  aren't  in  it  with  me 
where  Jim's  concerned.  He  and  mother  are  all  I've  got  in  the 


LORING  265 

world,  and  if  anyone  came  along  and  spoiled  his  life  ...  I 
should  be  quite  capable  of  murder." 

"Who  invited  Violet?"  I  asked.  Before  leaving  London  I 
had  dined  with  her  and  her  young  brother.  She  had  said 
nothing  about  coming  to  Scotland. 

"I  did,"  Amy  answered.  "I  wrote  to  her  from  Baden- 
Baden." 

"I  suppose  she  would  marry  Jim  ?" 

"That's  one  of  the  questions  you  musn't  put  to  a  woman," 
Amy  answered,  with  a  laugh. 

The  following  day  brought  Violet  and  the  Daintons,  as 
well  as  a  number  of  other  people  in  whom  I  was  not  so  im- 
mediately interested. 

There  was  a  certain  want  of  ease  about  our  meeting,  for 
I  fancy  Sir  Roger  was  as  frightened  of  his  host  as  I  was  of 
Lady  Dainton.  The  two  of  us  withdrew  without  prearrange- 
ment  to  the  smoking-room  and  exchanged  quiet  confidences 
till  it  was  time  to  dress  for  dinner.  I  sat  next  to  Sonia  at 
that  meal  and  was  sensible  of  an  agreeable  change  in  her 
manner.  We  had  not  met  since  her  rupture  with  Crabtree, 
and  I  imagine  that  two  years'  retirement  had  given  her  leisure 
for  salutary  reflection.  She  was  subdued  and  polite  to  people 
older  than  herself — cordial  even  to  members  of  her  own  sex ; 
and  so  little  attention  had  she  received  in  her  exile  that  she 
was  gracious  to  quite  inconsequential  men  whose  function  in 
the  old  days  would  have  been  to  hover  deferentially  around 
her,  awaiting  orders. 

"I'm  so  glad  its  you  and  not  a  stranger,"  she  was  good 
enough  to  tell  me  as  we  went  in.  "How's  everybody  and  what 
have  you  all  been  doing?" 

I  dealt  with  the  comprehensive  question  through  three 
courses,  and  at  the  end  she  asked  with  a  momentary  heighten- 
ing of  colour  whether  I  had  heard  anything  of  O'Rane. 

"I'm  glad  he's  doing  well,"  she  remarked  indifferently, 
when  I  had  sketched  his  career  from  the  Imperial  Hapsburg 
cells  by  way  of  Mombasa  to  Mexico.  "George,  I  suppose  you 
thought  I  treated  him  very  badly  ?" 

"Even  if  I  thought  so,  I  shouldn't  say  so,"  I  answered. 


266  SONIA 

"I  imagine  there  are  easier  and  more  restful  things  in  life 
than  to  be  loved  by  Raney.  Not  that  his  devotion  has  aged 
you  noticeably." 

"My  dear,  I'm  twenty-two !"  She  studied  her  own  reflec- 
tion in  the  silver  plate  before  her.  "When  you  see  him,  tell 
him  to  shed  a  tear  over  my  remains,"  she  went  on  mournfully. 
"He's  twenty-six  himself,"  I  said.  "And  Jim  and  I  are 
twenty-nine,  which  is  far  more  important,  though  I  may  say 
I  now  look  on  thirty  without  a  tremor." 

"Oh,  age  doesn't  matter  for  a  man,"  she  answered,  with 
a  touch  of  impatience.  "You've  got  work  to  do.  When 
you're  simply  waiting  for  someone  to  take  compassion  on 
you  .  .  ." 

"There  is  still  hope  even  at  twenty-two,"  I  said. 
"But  when  twenty-two  becomes  twenty-three,  and  then 
twenty-four,  and  then  twenty-five.  .  .  .  It's  rot  being  a  girl, 
George !"  she  exclaimed,  with  something  of  the  old  fire  in  her 
brown  eyes.  "I  always  think — I'm  not  a  Suffragette,  of  course 
— I  always  think  if  we  could  look  forward  to  any  kind  of 

career -" 

"But  there  are  scores,"  I  said. 

"Not  for — for  us,"  she  answered.  "Talk  to  mother  about 
it.  Girls  like  Amy  or  Violet  or  me,  you  understand." 

Lady  Dainton  was  sitting  on  my  left,  and  when  opportunity 
offered  I  opened  with  a  platitude  on  the  economic  position  of 
woman.  It  took  her  a  moment  to  get  her  bearings,  for  she 
and  Loring  had  been  discussing  the  misdeeds  of  the  Apaches. 
A  very  pretty  quarrel  in  their  ranks  had  been  extensively 
reported  for  some  months,  starting  from  the  night  when 
Erckmann  charged  Crabtree's  vaunted  cousin,  Lord  Beau- 
morris,  with  cheating  at  baccarat.  Beaumorris,  whose  bank- 
ruptcy discharge  had  been  suspended  in  consequence  of  a 
technicality  concerned  with  undisclosed  assets,  had  frankly 
joined  the  Apaches  for  what  he  could  make  out  of  them.  Erck- 
mann felt  that  rules  must  be  observed  even  in  baccarat,  even 
as  played  by  Beaumorris.  "Ve  vos  all  chentlemens  here,  yes, 
no,"  as  Summertown,  who  had  witnessed  the  scene,  informed 
me. 


LORING  267, 

Not  content  with  the  verbal  charge,  Erckmann  laid  indis- 
creet pen  to  paper  and  was  in  immediate  receipt  of  a  writ  for 
libel.  The  jury  disagreed,  and  Beaumorris,  venting  his  feel- 
ings in  the  Press,  took  occasion  to  call  Erckmann  an  Illicit 
Diamond  Buyer.  Proceedings  were  promptly  taken  for  crim- 
inal libel  aggravated  by  attempted  blackmail.  The  jury  again 
disagreed,  and,  though  both  Erckmann  and  Beaumorris  now 
left  the  court  with  equally  tarnished  records,  nothing  would 
satisfy  Beaumorris  but  an  action  for  malicious  prosecution. 

It  required  the  time  of  one  judge  sitting  six  days  a  week 
to  keep  abreast  of  Apache  litigation.  As  a  taxpayer,  I  some- 
times wondered  whether  either  reputation  was  worth  five  thou- 
sand pounds  a  year  of  public  money. 

"The  position  of  women?"  Lady  Dainton  repeated  in 
answer  to  my  question.  "It  depends  so  much  on  the  woman, 
don't  you  think?  If  a  girl's  young  and  pretty  and  has  a  little 
money  and  goes  about  in  Society,  don't  you  know  ?  she  usually 
makes  a  good  match."  Her  eyes  looked  past  me  for  a  mo- 
ment and  rested  on  Sonia.  "As  for  the  others  .  .  ." 

I  really  forget  what  their  fate  was  to  be.  No  doubt  their 
prospects,  too,  depended  on  the  possession  of  a  determined 
mother.  Evil  associations  corrupt  good  manners,  and  I  heard 
Lady  Dainton  issue  herself  an  invitation  at  Loring's  expense 
in  a  way  Crabtree  himself  could  not  have  bettered.  We  were 
discussing  plans  for  the  winter,  and  Loring  mentioned  the 
possibility  of  taking  his  yacht  for  a  three  or  four  months' 
cruise  in  the  Mediterranean.  I  was  invited,  but  had  to  refuse, 
because  a  general  election  was  impending;  Lady  Dainton  in- 
vited herself  and  Sonia,  leaving  Sir  Roger  behind  to  recapture 
the  Melton  seat ;  despite  the  superhuman  efforts  of  Amy  Lor- 
ing, my  cousin  Violet  was  not  approached. 

"That  absolutely  decides  it,"  Amy  said  ruefully.  "I  shan't 
give  in.  I  shall  go  too  and  do  everything  in  my  power  to  stop 
it,  but  I'm  afraid  he's  caught." 

'  'There's  many  a  slip  'twixt  the  cup  and  the  lip,' "  I  an- 
nounced, in  my  more  banal  manner. 


268  SONIA 


I  had  occasion  to  envy  Loring  and  the  passengers  of  the 
"White  Seal"  during  the  next  few  months.  A  second  winter 
election,  the  false  enthusiasm  and  cheap  victories  of  the 
platform,  the  endless  canvass  and  cold  wet  nights  and  days 
as  my  car  splashed  through  the  crumbling  lanes  of  Wiltshire 
— all  would  have  been  a  heavy  price  to  pay  even  had  I  been 
returned.  But  the  shrewd  voters  of  the  Cranborne  Division 
were  not  a  second  time  to  be  gulled — at  least  by  me.  There 
was  a  clear  House  of  Lords  issue :  my  old  opponent,  the 
Honourable  Trevor  Lawless,  fought  on  the  anti-Home-Rule 
"ticket,"  I  once  again  on  the  sanctity  of  Free  Trade  re- 
inforced by  Land  Reform.  He  was  elected  by  a  twelve- 
hundred  majority,  and  I,  in  an  interview  with  the  spirituous, 
rain-soaked  reporter  of  the  "Cranborne  Progressive  and  East 
Wilts  Liberal  Gazette,"  claimed  a  moral  victory  for  the  House 
of  Commons  control  of  finance. 

To  anyone  who  knew  the  1906  Parliament  when  there  was 
not  room  on  the  Government  side  for  all  the  ministerialists, 
the  first  1910  election  was  profoundly  depressing.  My  uncle's 
majority  was  brought  down  to  forty-seven,  and  many  a  Union- 
ist, returned  like  Sir  Roger  Dainton  after  four  years'  absence, 
could  say  that  the  country  was  perceptibly  returning  to  its 
senses. 

"There's  no  victory  without  its  casualty  list,"  I  replied  to 
my  friend  Jellaby,  the  Whipl^when  he  telegraphed  a  message 
of  sympathy.  There  seemed  nothing  amiss  with  the  sentiment, 
and  I  consoled  myself  with  the  prospect  of  wintering  at  San 
Remo  with  my  mother. 

"Can  give  you  another  seat  to  fight,"  Jellaby  wired  back, 
as  my  packing  came  to  an  end,  and  I  ordered  myself  a  place  in 
the  train-de-luxe. 

"Must  resist  casualty,  habit,"  I  returned  and  abandoned 
England  for  two  months. 

April  was   well  advanced  by  the  time  I  came  back  to 


LORING  269 

Princes  Gardens.  When  the  bitterness  of  defeat  is  past,  I 
know  few  sensations  sweeter  than  that  of  not  being  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  was  irritating  at  first  to  be  debarred 
from  the  smoking-room,  but,  as  master  of  my  own  time,  with 
no  more  interrupted  dinners,  no  autumn  sessions  and  no  depu- 
tations to  Ministers,  I  wondered  what  frenzy  of  enthusiasm 
could  have  made  me  for  four  years  the  slave  of  an  urbane  but 
vigilant  young  man  like  Jellaby,  whose  one  duty  in  life  was  to 
lay  me  by  the  heels  if  I  tried  to  leave  the  House  unpaired. 

"I  said  you'd  outgrow  the  phase,"  my  uncle  commented  one 
morning  at  breakfast.  His  daily  post-bag  brought  him  hun- 
dreds of  letters ;  mine,  since  I  had  parted  from  Westminster, 
a  couple  of  dozen  at  the  outside. 

"I  may  stand  again  if  I  can  arrange  always  to  winter  on  the 
Mediterranean,"  I  said,  "or  if  I  can  get  returned  unopposed. 
London  in  March  and  the  Great  Movement  of  Men  in  the  Cran- 
borne  Division  don't  appeal  to  me,  Bertrand,  as  they  once  did." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  yourself?"  he  asked. 

"Enjoy  life,"  I  answered  appreciatively.  "Read  books 
again,  dine  at  the  Club  a  bit,  run  over  to  Normandy  in  the 
summer,  see  my  friends  ...  By  the  way,  the  Lorings  are 
back.  He  wants  me  to  lunch  with  him  today." 

The  note  of  invitation  had  piqued  my  curiosity.  With  his 
instinctive  fear  of  giving  himself  away  Loring  had  written  no 
more  than :  "Lunch  2  p.m.  here.  Help  me  with  heavy  case  of 
conscience."  I  sent  an  acceptance  by  telephone,  sat  half  the 
morning  in  the  Park  watching  the  passers-by  and  in  due  course 
made  my  way  to  Curzon  Street.  The  air  was  redolent  of 
spring,  and  in  its  fire  the  whole  world  seemed  to  have  flung 
its  winter  garment.  Light  dresses  fluttered  in  the  warm  breeze, 
everything  was  new  and  clean  and  young;  the  very  cart- 
horses welcomed  the  advent  of  May  with  shining  harness  and 
gay  ribbons. 

"You  don't  look  as  if  your  conscience  were  troubling  you," 
I  said  to  Loring  when  luncheon  was  over,  and  we  were  sitting 
alone  over  our  coffee  and  cigars.  He  had  come  back  with  a 
clear  eye  and  bronzed  cheek,  radiant  with  health  and  good 
spirits.  "Did  you  have  a  good  time?" 


27o  SONIA 

"Wonderful !"  His  enthusiasm  was  rare  and  strange.  "In- 
credibly wonderful !" 

"I  forget  who  was  there,"  I  said. 

"Oh,  a  mob  of  people.  The  only  ones  that  mattered  were 
Lady  Dainton " 

"Who  petrifies  me,"  I  interrupted. 

"And  Sonia." 

He  paused.  I  knocked  the  ash  from  my  cigar  and  said 
nothing. 

"George,  Sonia  and  I  are  engaged." 

I  still  said  nothing. 

"For  God's  sake  take  some  notice !"  he  exclaimed. 

"Is  this  your  case  of  conscience?"  I  asked.  "You  want  to 
get  out  of  it?" 

Loring  clasped  his  forehead  with  both  hands  in  utter  de- 
spair. 

"And  you  used  to  be  quite  intelligent !"  he  groaned.  "I'm 
serious,  George.  Sonia's  promised  to  marry  me;  Lady  Dain- 
ton's  good  enough  to  make  no  objection " 

"She  wouldn't,"  I  murmured. 

"...  My  mother  and  Amy  are  simply  in  love  with 
her  .  .  ." 

Mentally  I  congratulated  Lady  Amy  on  her  loyalty. 

"And  now  you  want  my  blessing?"  I  hazarded.  "Well, 
best  of  luck  to  you,  Jim." 

"Thanks,  old  man.  I  want  more  than  that,  though.  Some- 
thing that  Amy  said  made  me  think  that  little  Raney  had  once 
been  rather  in  love  with  Sonia.  You  know  him  better  than  I 
do:  what  does  it  amount  to?  Whenever  7've  seen  them  to- 
gether, they  were  fighting  like  cats." 

"Amy  was  referring  to  something  that  happened  a  good 
time  ago,"  I  answered.  In  retrospect  I  am  still  struck  with 
he  diplomacy  of  my  words. 

"Oh,  it's  ancient  history  ?"  Loring  looked  relieved.  "I  was 
afraid — I  mean,  short  of  giving  up  Sonia,  there's  nothing  in 
the  world  I  wouldn't  do  to  avoid  hurting  the  little  man's  feel- 
ings." 


LORING  271 

"If  you'd  care  for  me  to  write,"  I  began,  in  off-hand 
fashion. 

"That's  what  I  was  going  to  ask  you  to  do.  George,  you've 
never  been  in  love  .  .  ." 

"For  some  unaccountable  reason,  all  newly  engaged  men 
pay  their  bachelor  friends  that  compliment,"  I  said. 

"Well,  you  haven't,  or  you  wouldn't  be  so  damned  cold- 
blooded about  it.  Honestly,  until  last  night  I  didn't  know 
what  happiness  was " 

"This  is  all  rather  vieux  jeu"  I  objected. 

"It  was  just  as  we  got  into  the  Channel."  The  expression 
in  his  eyes  had  grown  dreamy  and  distant.  "We  were  on  deck, 
she  and  I " 

"I  will  not  submit  to  this,  Jim!"  I  said. 

He  laughed  as  a  drunken  man  laughs. 

"If  you  won't,  somebody  else  will  have  to,"  he  said.  "I'm 
v — I'm  simply  bursting  with  it.  For  sheer  dullness — on  my  soul, 
George,  I'll  never  ask  you  to  lunch  with  me  again,  in  this  world 
or  the  next." 

"The  veiled  compliment  is  wasted  on  you,"  I  said. 

As  I  walked  home,  I  took  stock  of  the  position.  Granted 
that  I  had  been  dull,  I  was  no  actor  and  could  affect  little 
rapture  at  the  prospect  of  losing  my  best  friend,  however  deep 
his  momentary  intoxication.  And  every  word  that  Amy  had 
said  to  me  at  House  of  Steynes  the  previous  summer  stood 
as  true  as  when  she  spoke  it,  and  I  added  my  endorsement. 
Sonia  had  been  as  entirely  charming  on  that  occasion  as  she 
had  been  exasperating  in  the  same  place  some  years  earlier 
when  Crabtree  first  proposed  to  her.  If  I  have  suggested 
corporal  punishment  for  her,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
bachelors  are  sometimes  lacking  in  the  finer  chivalry;  but 
which  Sonia  Jim  was  marrying  remained,  I  felt,  to  be  seen. 
There  would,  indeed,  be  discoveries,  on  both  sides,  for  Loring 
at  nine-and-twenty  had  his  share  of  angularity. 

And  I  was  not  easy  in  my  mind  about  the  way  O'Rane 
would  take  the  news.  It  is  true  I  had  never  regarded  his  at- 
tachment very  seriously  from  the  time  when  the  undergraduate 
of  twenty  became  engaged  to  the  temporary  debutante  of  six- 


272  SONIA 

teen ;  true  also  that  three  and  a  half  years  abroad  had  probably 
made  a  very  different  man  of  him.  At  the  same  time,  I  recalled 
his  passionate  outburst  on  the  lawn  at  Crowley  Court  when 
Lady  Dainton  declined  to  recognize  the  engagement;  and  it 
did  not  need  a  man  who  knew  him  as  well  as  I  did  to  appreci- 
ate his  curious  tenacity  of  character.  I  came  to  feel  that  the 
news  would  hit  him  hard. 

My  letter  of  explanation  was  not  easy  to  write.  I  roughed 
out  one  draft  and  tore  it  up;  then  a  second,  then  a  third. 
Bertrand  put  his  head  in  at  my  door  to  say  he  was  dining  at 
the  House,  and  I  hurriedly  changed  my  clothes  and  drove 
down  to  the  Club.  There  I  made  a  fourth  attempt  as  unsatis- 
factory as  the  first  three,  thrust  it  impatiently  into  my  pocket, 
and  walked  into  the  hall  to  read  the  latest  telegrams. 

"You  said  eight  o'clock.  I'm  before  my  time,  but  I'll  wait 
out  in  St.  James's  Street  if  you  like." 

I  spun  round  at  the  touch  of  ringers  on  my  shoulders. 
Only  one  voice  in  the  world  held  as  much  music  in  it — low  and 
vibrant,  setting  my  nerves  a-tingle. 

"You  are  as  dramatic  as  ever,  Raney,"  I  said. 

"Shall  I  go  and  wait  outside?  You  might  answer  my 
question." 

"And  in  other  respects  you  don't  seemed  to  have  changed." 
I  looked  him  up  and  down  and  turned  him  to  the  light.  His 
fingers  as  he  shook  hands  were  as  hard  and  strong  as  steel 
cable ;  he  was  slender  and  wiry  as  a  greyhound,  with  the  big 
eyes,  smooth  features  and  bodily  grace  of  a  girl. 

"You're  trained  down  pretty  fine,"  I  said.  "And  your  hair's 
as  untidy  as  ever — my  dear  fellow !  don't  touch  it !  It's  one 
of  your  charms.  You  have  also  reverted  to  a  hybrid  twang 
reminiscent  of  twelve  years  ago  in  a  certain  great  public 
school " 

He  handed  his  hat  and  coat  to  a  page-boy  and  pointed  to  the 
dining-room  door. 

"I've  had  nothing  to  eat  since  breakfast,  George." 

"Two  Hoola-Hoolas,  please,"  I  called  out  to  a  waiter. 
"In  the  strangers'  room.  Raney,  it's  the  devil  of  a  long  time 
since  I  saw  you  last." 


LORING  273 

"Did  you  expect  me?"  he  demanded,  with  a  child's  eager- 
ness to  find  out  whether  his  little  piece  of  theatricality  had 
succeeded. 

"The  very  cart-horses  of  London  expected  you,"  I  said. 
"I  observed  them  with  ribbons  on  their  tails  as  I  went  to  lunch 
with  one  Loring.  'It  is  the  first  of  May,'  I  said.  I  suppose 
you'd  like  me  to  order  you  some  dinner." 

"Then  you  didn't  really  think  I  should  turn  up  ?"  he  asked, 
glancing  up  from  the  bill  of  fare  I  had  handed  him. 

"Not  wanting  to  eat  two  dinners  in  one  night,  I  forbore 
to  order  anything  until  I'd  seen  whether  you  were  alive." 

His  deep-set  black  eyes  became  charged  with  laughter. 

"Alive!"  he  exclaimed.  "I'm  not  twenty-seven  yet, 
George,  and  I've  done  all  my  work  in  life.  I've  made  all  kinds 
of  money.  /  could  eat  two  dinners  every  night  if  I  wanted  to. 
I  can  start  seriously  now ;  I'm  the  equal  of  you  or  Jim  or  any- 
one. Not  literally,  of  course;  he'd  call  me  a  pauper.  It's  a 
matter  of  degree,  but  I  shall  never  again  be  handicapped  by 
not  having  money."  The  waiter  arrived  with  the  cocktails: 
O'Rane  raised  his  glass  and  bowed:  "Say  you're  glad  to  see 
me,  old  man." 

"I  don't  think  the  point  was  ever  seriously  challenged," 
I  said.  "Continued  prosperity !  I  don't  use  the  word  luck  with 
you." 

As  we  sat  down  to  dinner  his  eyes  were  brimming  with 
tears. 

Some  day  I  should  like  to  write  a  series  of  books  about 
O'Rane.  I  should  not  mind  if  they  were  little  read,  I  should 
not  mind  if  they  were  read  and  disbelieved ;  they  will  never 
come  from  his  pen,  and,  as  he  confided  more  in  me  than  in  any- 
one else,  I  feel  a  responsibility  to  the  half-dozen  of  his  friends 
who  may  survive  the  war.  Midnight  was  long  past  before 
the  tale  of  his  adventures  was  done — the  selected  tale  of  such 
adventures  as  he  thought  would  interest  me. 

"And  now  ?"  I  asked,  as  the  smoking-room  waiter  came  in 
and  looked  pointedly  at  the  clock. 


274  SONIA 

"Ah  God!  one  sniff  of  England — 
To  greet  our  flesh  and  blood — 
To  hear  the  hansoms  slurring 

Once  more  through  London  mud!" 

He  walked  to  the  window  and  gazed  down  on  the  stream 
of  cars,  their  dark  paint  gleaming  in  the  lamplight  as  they 
glided  down  Pall  Mall  from  the  Carlton  and  hummed  richly 
up  St.  James's  Street  or  disappeared  into  the  silence  of  the 
Park. 

"I'm  going  to  have  a  long  night  in  a  real  bed,"  he  an- 
nounced, "as  distinct  from  either  a  berth  or  bare  boards  in 
a  tent " 

"I  can  give  you  all  that  in  Princes  Gardens,"  I  interrupted. 

"Later,  old  man,  if  I  may.  I've  sent  my  baggage  to  the 
Charing  Cross  Hotel.  To-morrow  I  shall  call  on  Loring,  see 
who  else  is  in  town " 

His  words  brought  me  face  to  face  with  the  problem  I 
had  been  shirking  all  the  evening. 

"I  wrote  you  a  letter  to-night  before  dinner,"  I  said  as 
we  walked  down  to  the  hall.  "I'll  post  it  so  that  it  reaches 
you  to-morrow  morning.  Raney,  I'm  afraid  you  won't  care 
much  about  the  contents." 

He  raised  his  eyebrows  in  surprise. 

"Why  not  give  it  me  now  ?"  he  asked. 

"You  may  prefer  to  digest  it  alone,"  I  said. 

He  held  out  his  hand  with  a  determined  little  smile. 

"I'll  take  it  home  and  read  it,"  he  promised.  "I  can't  sleep 
with  unknown  perils  hanging  over  me." 

I  gave  him  the  letter,  and  we  parted  on  the  understanding 
that  he  was  to  call  round  in  Princes  Gardens  as  soon  as  he 
was  sufficiently  rested. 

I  have  no  idea  how  he  slept  that  night.  Next  morning 
there  was  no  sign  of  him,  and  in  the  afternoon  when  I  went 
to  make  inquiries  at  the  Charing  Cross  Hotel  I  was  handed 
a  pencil  note  scrawled  on  the  back  of  my  own  envelope  to 
him. 

"My  apologies  to  your  uncle.  Just  off  to  Flushing  to  com- 
plete my  rest  cure." 


LORING  275 

When  I  met  Sonia  and  Loring  at  dinner  the  following  night, 
I  told  them  that  I  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  O'Rane  on  his  way 
through  London  from  Mexico  to  the  Continent.  They  were 
politely  interested. 


VI 


I  have  reached  an  age  when  some  four-fifths  of  my  con- 
temporaries are  married.  It  is  a  melancholy  exercise  familiar 
to  all  bachelors  to  count  the  number  of  friendships  that  have 
closed  on  one  side  with  a  silver  cigarette-box  and  on  the 
other  with  an  invitation  to  dinner  in  a  very  new  house.  "I 
want  you  and  my  wife  to  be  great  friends,"  Benedict  has  writ- 
ten. Usually  I  have  wondered  what  he  could  see  in  his 
common-place  partner,  and  always  the  little  woman  has  mar- 
velled that  Benedict  and  I  have  any  bond  of  union.  Sometimes 
I  can  see  him  growing  wistful  in  recollection  of  old  times — and 
this  makes  her  jealous ;  sometimes  marriage  obliterates  the  past, 
and  we  both  decide,  without  a  word  exchanged,  to  leave  our 
friendship  in  its  grave.  The  little  dinners  end  early — and  yet 
seem  strangely  long.  We  meet  perhaps  once  a  year  after  that, 
and  I  affect  interest  in  curiously  raw  babies ;  but  the  Bene- 
dicts, man  and  wife,  as  a  rule  become  too  much  absorbed  in 
their  family  to  care  for  interlopers.  Sometimes  I  give  a 
christening  present  and  make  rash  promises  by  the  font;  and 
then  nothing  happens  until  half  a  generation  later  my  god- 
children present  themselves  for  confirmation.  .  .  . 

In  one  or  two  instances  the  intimacy  has  endured  by 
my  keeping  out  of  the  way  in  the  early  years.  Anyone  who 
knew  Loring  or  Sonia  at  all  could  guess  that  they  would 
require  time  and  infinite  patience  to  arrive  at  a  modus  vivendi; 
and  I  knew  both  so  well  that  I  felt  sure  they  wanted  no 
spectators.  Two  days  after  the  engagement  I  invited  them 
to  dine  with  me  at  the  Ritz;  four  months  later  Lake  House 
was  thrown  open  to  them  if  they  cared  to  come.  My  services 
were  at  their  disposal,  but  I  could  see  from  our  first  meeting 


276  SONIA 

that  there  was  no  easy  time  before  them.  The  pace  was  too 
hot,  and  they  both  had  too  much  mettle.  I  recall  that  my 
excellently  served  dinner  was  of  the  gloomiest,  though  the  Ritz 
was  newly  opened  and  still  amusing  at  this  time.  Loring  would 
gaze  raptly  at  Sonia,  his  soup-spoon  half-way  to  his  lips ; 
Sonia  for  no  visible  reason  would  touch  his  hand,  and  they 
would  both  smile  mysteriously.  Not  till  dinner  was  over,  and 
we  were  seated  in  the  lounge  with  our  coffee,  could  I  rouse 
them  from  their  dream. 

"The  great  event?"  Loring  echoed,  when  I  asked  if  any 
date  had  been  fixed.  "There  you  rather  have  me." 

"In  about  three  years,"  murmured  Sonia,  with  a  note  of 
discontent  in  her  voice. 

"What  are  you  waiting  for?"  I  asked  as  I  offered  him  a 
cigar. 

He  accepted  it  and  then  replaced  it  in  the  box,  saying  he 
would  prefer  a  cigarette.  So  many  cheap  jokes  are  made  at 
the  expense  of  the  newly  engaged  that  I  refrained  from  com- 
ment when  a  confirmed  cigar-smoker  reformed  and  wasted  his 
time  on  cigarettes.  The  reason  was  never  a  moment  in  doubt, 
for  he  was  rewarded  with  a  smile  as  the  cigar  was  returned. 

"We  neither  of  us  want  a  long  engagement,"  he  explained, 
and  then  to  Sonia,  "Do  we,  darling?" 

"There's  no  point  in  it,"  answered  Sonia,  whose  experience 
was  discouraging  to  procrastination. 

"Well,  this  is  May,"  Loring  reckoned.  "Lady  Dainton 
won't  have  a  May  marriage.  June?  The  only  thing  is, 
there's  such  a  devil  of  a  lot " 

"Jim!" 

Loring  laughed. 

"Sorry !  There's  such  a  lot  to  do  first.  The  place  at  Chep- 
stow's  in  a  fearful  state;  I  must  put  electric  light  in  the 
Dower  House  before  my  mother  can  move  in.  As  for  the 
barrack  in  Roscommon " 

"But  we  can't  live  in  more  than  one  place  at  a  time,"  Sonia 
objected. 

"I  only  want  to  make  them  fit  for  you,  darling,"  he  pro- 
tested. 


LORING  277 

"I  should  have  thought  your  agent "  sighed  Sonia ;  then, 

turning  ruefully  to  me,  "and  of  course  I've  got  to  be  sent  out  on 
approval  for  everyone  to  find  fault  with " 

Lorihg  pressed  her  hand  reassuringly.  "Don't  you  worry 
about  that"  he  begged. 

"But  it's  you  I  want  to  marry,  dear !"  she  answered,  put- 
ting her  face  close  to  his  and  looking  into  his  eyes. 

"It's  always  done,"  Loring  protested  weakly.  "We  don't 
want  to  give  offence,  do  we,  sweetheart?  And  it's  only  three 
or  four  houses " 

Sonia  shook  her  head,  unconvinced  by  his  understatement. 
To  be  related  to  half  the  Catholic  families  in  England  has  its 
drawbacks,  and  it  was  not  easy  to  shorten  the  list  of  unavoid- 
able visits.  From  Yorkshire  and  the  Fleming-Althorps  they 
would  have  to  go  on  to  the  Wrefords  of  Wreford  Abbey,  and 
once  in  Northumberland  there  was  no  excuse  for  not  visiting 
the  Knightriders  in  Inverness — Lady  Knightrider  and  Lady 
Loring  were  sisters — and  from  Scotland  to  Ireland  and  Ireland 
back  to  Wales.  ...  It  was  a  formidable  tour,  and  I  began  to 
regard  Sonia's  estimate  of  three  years  as  not  unreasonable. 
On  the  principle  that  one  more  or  less  made  little  difference, 
Lake  House  was  included  in  the  itinerary  en  route  for  the 
Hunter-Oakleighs  in  Dublin.  A  woman  might  say  that  Sonia 
was  not  reluctant  to  drive  in  triumph  to  my  cousin's  door ;  as  a 
man  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  Loring  and  Violet  had 
been  such  good  friends  in  the  past  that  he  was  not  in  the  least 
anxious  to  meet  her  for  the  present. 

Sonia  suddenly  laid  her  hand  caressingly  on  his  arm. 

"Jim,  dear,"  she  pleaded,  "why  can't  we  be  married  at 
once — quite  quietly — and  then  stay  with  all  these  people  after- 
wards?" 

"I  promised  your  mother  we'd  have  the  wedding  at  the 
Oratory,"  he  reminded  her. 

"Yes,  but  we  needn't  invite  anyone." 

"They'll  be  awfully  hurt  if  they're  not  asked." 

"Oh!  what  nonsense!"  she  exclaimed.  "Who  is  there? 
George,  will  you  be  offended  if  you're  not  invited?" 

"It  would  be  the  truest  kindness,"  I  said.     By  old-fash- 


SONIA 

ioned  standards  her  anxiety  to  get  married  was  hardly  decent, 
but  Sonia  paid  scanty  respect  to  old-fashioned  standards. 

"What  did  I  tell  you,  Jim  ?"  she  cried  triumphantly.  "You 
go  to  mother  and  tell  her  it's  all  fixed  for  the  first  of  June  an<^ 
nobody's  to  be  invited." 

Two  days  later  I  met  Lady  Dainton  at  luncheon  and  asked 
her  what  had  been  decided. 

"It'll  be  some  time  in  June  or  July,"  she  told  me,  adding 
with  emphasis,  "at  the  Oratory,  as  we  arranged  at  first. 
Jim  had  an  absurd  idea  of  not  inviting  anyone.  So  like  a 
man,  don't  you  know?  making  a  hole-and-corner  business. 
Anyone  in  his  position,  don't  you  know? — it's  expected  of 
them." 

So  it  was  decreed  that  fitting  publicity  should  be  given 
to  the  ceremony,  but  the  date  was  not  to  be  either  in  June  or 
July.  On  the  sixth  of  May  King  Edward  died,  and  England 
was  plunged  into  mourning. 

When  the  funeral  was  over,  I  discussed  with  Bertrand  the 
desirability  of  spending  the  summer  in  Ireland.  The  House 
of  Commons  had  no  longer  a  claim  on  me,  and  there  would  be 
no  London  Season.  He  was  strongly  opposed  to  the  idea, 
however,  and  urged  me  to  stay  in  town  and  try  to  make 
capital  out  of  the  sobered  state  of  the  public  mind.  A  eulogis- 
tic Press  was  for  ever  talking  of  the  late  King's  diplomacy  and 
peaceful  arts ;  my  uncle  wished  to  test  the  sincerity  of  the 
panegyrists  and  encourage  the  Government  to  make  some  offer 
of  proportional  disarmament. 

So  for  three  summer  months  I  went  back  to  Bouverie 
Street  and  the  Committee  Room  in  Princes  Gardens.  The  re- 
sults of  our  renewed  campaign  are  a  matter  of  common  knowl- 
edge :  representations  were  made  to  Germany,  a  tortuous  dip- 
lomatic debate  was  carried  on  and  a  year  later,  before  any 
conclusion  could  be  reached,  the  gunboat  "Panther"  steamed 
south  to  Agadir.  There  were  wild  stories  of  a  German  plan 
to  occupy  Northern  France,  wilder  projects  of  landing  British 
troops  on  the  Belgian  coast;  a  Mansion  House  speech  less 
euphuistic  and  platitudinous  than  most,  gossip  at  the  Eclectic 
Club  about  an  ultimatum. 


LORING  279 

Bertrand  was  silent  and  uncommunicative  in  these  days, 
but,  as  the  menace  of  war  withdrew,  I  could  see  him  deriving 
philosophic  satisfaction  from  the  crisis. 

"That's  twice  in  three  years,  George,"  he  observed  one 
night  when  I  was  dining  with  him  at  the  Club.  "Is  modern 
war  too  big  a  thing?  Are  they  all  afraid  to  start  it?  You 
remember  when  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  were  grabbed  in 
1908  ?  Russia  threatened  Austria,  Germany  threatened  Russia 
— and  Russia  backed  down.  Diplomacy's  like  poker,  you  know, 
the  hands  are  not  played.  The  same  thing's  happened  now; 
we've  threatened  Germany,  and  she's  counted  her  army  corps 
and  battleships  and  decided  she  isn't  strong  enough.  Well, 
George,  if  the  cards  are  never  to  be  played,  why  should  sane 
governments  go  on  raising  each  other?  Four  aces  bear  the 
same  relation  to  two  as  two  to  one — why  can't  we  stop  this 
ruinous  armament  race  ?" 

But  the  Agadir  incident  was  still  a  year  ahead  of  us  when 
O'Rane  returned  from  the  Continent  at  the  end  of  July  and 
stayed  behind  for  a  last  cigar  at  the  end  of  a  Thursday  dinner. 

"I've  been  a  Breslau  merchant  the  last  few  months,  sir," 
he  told  us  when  my  uncle  asked  for  news.  "I've  been  eating, 
drinking,  smoking  German " 

"You'll  end  your  days  in  a  fortress,  Raney,"  I  observed. 

"I  think  not.  That  paper  of  yours,  'Peace,'  has  a  large 
circulation.  All  the  politicians  and  most  of  the  Army  read  it.*' 

"This  is  fame,"  I  said  to  Bertrand. 

"They  regard  it  as  the  swan-song  of  the  effete  British," 
said  O'Rane.  "The  merchants  and  journalists  and  so  on  are 
with  you  because  Germany's  so  hard-up  with  all  her  insane 
preparations  that  a  tax  on  capital  may  come  any  day.  The 
German  government's  different:  it  thinks  you're  either  not 
equal  to  the  strain  or  else  you're  hypnotizing  them  to  drop 
their  weapons  before  you  strike.  The  German's  an  odd 
creature,  sir ;  he  thinks  everyone's  like  himself  without  any  of 
his  virtues.  King  Edward  and  Grey  have  made  something  of 
a  ring-fence  round  Germany ;  if  Bismarck  and  the  old  Emperor 
had  done  the  same  thing,  they'd  be  declaring  war  now.  Ergo, 
we're  going  to  declare  war.  I'm  afraid  it  will  come,  sir.  I've 


280  SONIA 

brought  you  back  some  books  on  Pan-Germanism  by  a  mis- 
creant called  Bernhardi :  the  Bernhardi  temperament  can  only 
be  destroyed  by  an  unsuccessful  war  or  a  revolution  or  State 
bankruptcy.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  our  job  for  the  next  few 
years  will  be  to  wake  up  this  country  and  make  it  prepared  for 
all  emergencies." 

"How'd  you  set  about  it  ?"  I  asked. 

"I'm  going  to  wander  round  England  and  see  what  people 
are  saying.  I'm  out  of  touch  with  politics  here,  but  some 
years  ago  I  prophesied  a  revolution  in  this  peaceful  land  and 
I  want  to  see  if  the  temper  of  the  working  classes  is  different 
from  what  it  was  in  the  old  days  when  I  was  a  manual  labourer 
here.  Will  you  be  in  Ireland  later  on,  George?  I  should  like 
to  come  and  see  you  if  I  may." 

"Fix  your  own  time,"  I  said.  "I've  got  a  half-promise 
from  Loring  and  Sonia,  but  nothing's  decided." 

He  thought  over  my  words  for  a  few  moments  and  then 
got  up  to  go. 

"After  all,"  he  said,  as  I  helped  him  into  his  coat,  "if  they 
don't  mind  meeting  me,  I  oughtn't  to  mind  meeting  them." 

For  three  months  I  had  had  a  certain  want  of  sympathy  on 
my  conscience. 

"Raney !"  I  began,  and  then  stopped. 

"Don't  trouble,  old  man,"  he  answered,  reading  my 
thoughts.  "That  book's  closed — for  the  present,  at  least. 
They're  not  married  yet,  either." 

"Good  night,  Raney,"  I  said,  shaking  hands. 

He  laughed  a  little  sardonically  and  ran  down  the  steps 
into  the  night. 

At  the  beginning  of  September  I  received  a  wire  from 
O'Rane  to  say  that  he  would  be  with  me  on  the  tenth.  Two 
days  later  Loring  telegraphed  from  Fishguard  Harbour  that  he 
and  Sonia  were  actually  on  their  way  to  Ireland.  I  should  not 
have  deliberately  timed  their  visits  to  coincide,  but  Loring's 
arrangements  had  been  so  unsettled  that  at  his  request  I  made 
my  own  independently.  Twice  during  August  Sonia  had  fixed 
a  date,  twice  Loring  had  written  with  contrite  apology  to 
cancel  it  and  suggest  another.  It  was  all  his  fault,  circum- 


LORING  281 

stances  over  which  he  had  no  control.  .  .  .  The  excuses  ran 
so  smoothly  that  even  my  mother,  most  charitable  and  un- 
suspicious of  women,  became  convinced  that  it  was  not  his 
fault. 

I  had  no  one  staying  with  me  when  they  arrived,  white 
and  tired  after  their  journey,  and  Sonia  sighed  with  relief  when 
my  mother  told  her  so  the  first  night. 

"I'm  worn  out  with  trying  to  keep  new  people  distinct,"  she 
said.  "As  for  Jim,  his  hair's  falling  out  under  the  strain." 

He  had  shaved  off  his  moustache — as  I  advised  him  to  do 
five  years  before — but  otherwise  seemed  unchanged  save  for 
a  tired  look  about  the  eyes  and  a  slightly  subdued  manner  of 
speaking. 

"Mr.  O'Rane's  coming  the  day  after  to-morrow,"  said  my 
sister.  "It  won't  be  so  quiet  when  he's  here." 

Sonia  made  no  comment  and  plunged  into  a  description  of 
the  houses  they  had  visited  during  the  last  three  months. 

"Jim's  uncle,  Lord  Deningham,  is  the  next,"  she  said. 
"Down  in  Clare.  All  the  clan's  being  gathered  to  receive  us, 

and  I'm  simply  petrified  at  the  thought  of  it.    They'll  all  hate 

__,_        » 
me 

"Darling !"  Jim  interposed. 

"They  will,"  she  repeated  obstinately.  "That's  next 
Wednesday.  Can  you  stand  us  for  five  days,  Mrs.  Oak- 
leigh?" 

"As  long  as  you  can  stop,"  said  my  mother. 

When  the  ladies  had  left  us  after  dinner  I  congratulated 
Loring  on  the  absence  of  his  moustache. 

"Sonia  didn't  like  it,"  he  explained.  "Port?  By  all  means. 
I'm  as  tired  as  a  dog.  It's  gone  off  thundering  well,  and  they 
all  loved  her,  as  I  knew  they  would.  All  the  same,  a  long  en- 
gagement's a  strain." 

"It  isn't  the  long  engagement,"  I  said.  "It's  being  in  love. 
When  you're  safely  married  and  don't  have  to  sprinkle 
'darlings'  like  a  pepper-pot  and  can  take  the  best  chair  and  be 
snappy  at  breakfast " 

"Oh,  you  bachelors,"  he  interrupted  with  a  laugh.  "A 
long  engagement  has  its  points,  though."  Quite  frequently  it 


282  SONIA' 

prevents  marriage,  but  I  saw  no  object  in  putting  this  view 
before  him.  "We've  been  rubbing  off  the  corners,  weeding 

out  undesirable  friends Oh,  you're  safe,  but  Sonia  rather 

bars  Val  Arden,  and  young  Summertown's  developing  into 
too  much  of  an  Apache  for  my  taste.  We're  shaking  down." 

"And  how  soon  will  you  both  be  purged  of  all  your  sins?" 
I  asked. 

He  did  not  hear  the  question  and  sat  staring  thoughtfully 
at  the  decanter. 

"I'm  afraid  she  finds  the  religious  part  rather  hard  to  pick 
up,"  he  said.  "She  will  call  all  Catholics  'Papists.'  /  don't 
mind,  but  some  of  my  people  .  .  .  And  when  she  first  met  the 
Cardinal,  she  insisted  on  shaking  his  hand.  Of  course,  it's  a 
very  small  point ;  you  musn't  think  I'm  finding  fault  with  her. 
How  did  you  think  she  was  looking?" 

"Very  well,"  I  said.    "The  new  pearl-collar  suits  her." 

"It  isn't  new,"  he  corrected  me.  "We've  had  it  in  the  family 
for  some  time."  His  voice  became  confidential  and  his  manner 
eager,  as  with  a  man  mutely  asking  for  sympathy.  "Absolute- 
ly between  ourselves,  George,  there  was  rather  a  row  about  it. 
I  got  the  bank  to  send  all  our  stuff  down  to  House  of  Steynes, 
and  she  insisted  on  wearing  some  of  it.  My  poor  mother  was 
fearfully  shocked — and  said  she  oughtn't  to  have  touched  it 
till  she  was  married.  Once  again,  it's  a  very  small  point." 

His  vigorously  defensive  tone,  adopted  to  answer  criti- 
cisms I  had  not  made,  led  me  to  think  there  had  been  numerous 
small  points  for  arbitration  and  diplomacy — as  when  Sonia 
wished  to  modernize  the  'Mary  Queen  of  Scots'  room  at 
Steynes  that  had  been  untouched  since  the  young  queen  slept 
there  in  the  second  year  of  her  reign. 

"You'll  shake  down,"  I  agreed  encouragingly  when  he  made 
me  throw  away  a  half-smoked  cigar  because  the  people  in  the 
drawing-room  would  be  wondering  what  had  happened  to  us. 

"Oh  Lord,  yes !"  he  answered  cheerfully  over  his  shoulder 
as  he  pulled  up  a  chair  and  began  to  talk  to  my  mother. 

Sonia  was  standing  by  the  window  looking  out  over  the 
lake.  Presently  she  walked  out  on  the  terrace  and  cajled  to 
Loring  to  join  her.  For  a  few  minutes  I  watched  them  stand- 


LORING  283 

ing  on  the  lowest  terrace  in  earnest  conversation,  then  they 
returned  to  the  house  and  Sonia  asked  to  be  allowed  to  go  to 
bed. 

"Tell  me  when  you'd  like  to  turn  in  yourself,"  I  said  to 
Loring  when  we  were  alone  in  the  smoking-room  for  a  last 
drink. 

He  walked  up  and  down  restlessly,  glancing  at  the  pictures 
and  books,  and  finally  coming  to  anchor  opposite  my  chair. 

"Did  Beryl  say  you  were  expecting  Raney  here  ?"  he  asked, 
sipping  his  whiskey  and  soda  and  staring  rather  hard  at  the 
floor. 

"The  day  after  to-morrow,"  I  said. 

"The  deuce  you  are !"  He  put  down  his  tumbler  and  re- 
sumed his  restless  walk.  "This  is  devilish  awkward,  George. 
Not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  on  it,  Sonia  refuses  to  meet  him." 

"What's  the  trouble  ?"  I  asked.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
hear  her  reasons  as  expressed  to  Loring. 

He  tramped  up  and  down  until  I  pushed  a  chair  in  his  way 
and  made  him  sit  down. 

"Women  are  beyond  me,"  he  complained.  "I  don't  know 
the  rights  of  the  case,  but  she  says  he  was  very  insulting  to 
her." 

"But  when  was  all  this?"  I  asked.  "I  didn't  know  she'd 
seen  him." 

"Oh,  it  was  years  ago — down  at  Crowley — before  he  went 
abroad.  Raney's  got  a  very  sharp  tongue  and  keeps  no  sort  of 
check  on  it,  you  know." 

"Yes,  I  don't  defend  what  he  said  on  that  occasion,"  I 
put  in. 

Loring  looked  at  me  in  surprise. 

"You  knew  about  it?" 

"I  was  in  the  room,"  I  said,  "and  anything  I  didn't  hear  he 
came  and  told  me  in  my  bedroom  that  night." 

"Well,  what  the  devil  did  he  say?"  he  demanded  indig- 
nantly. 

"It's  ancient  history  now,  Jim." 

"Sonia's  kept  it  pretty  fresh  in  her  mind,"  he  retorted. 

I  might  have  recalled  to  them  both  a  dinner-table  scene 


284  SONIA 

at  House  of  Steynes  thirteen  months  before  when  Sonia  in- 
quired how  Raney  was  getting  on  in  Mexico  and  expressed  a 
more  than  friendly  desire  to  see  him  on  his  return.  That  was, 
Of  course,  before  the  engagement  to  Loring. 

"What  d'you  suggest?"  I  contented  myself  with  asking. 

"I  think  we'd  better  clear  out,"  he  answered,  with  emphasis 
on  the  pronoun. 

"To  the  Deninghams?" 

"They  can't  take  us  till  Wednesday.  Sonia  talks  about  go- 
ing to  an  hotel,  but  that's  out  of  the  question.  I'd  better  take 
her  back  to  London " 

"And  cut  the  Deninghams  ?" 

"Oh,  I  can't  do  that.  He's  my  mother's  only  brother,  you 
know." 

"Do  I  understand  you're  proposing  to  take  her  from  Kerry 
to  London  and  back  again  from  London  to  Clare  in  five,  four 
days  ?"  He  was  silent.  "What  does  she  say,  Jim  ?" 

"Refuses  point-blank,"  he  answered  despairingly. 

I  walked  over  to  the  writing  table  and  took  out  a  telegraph 
form. 

"The  simplest  thing  is  to  put  Raney  off  for  the  present,"  I 
said. 

He  made  no  answer,  but,  when  my  tea  was  brought  me  next 
morning,  there  was  a  pencilled  note  lying  on  the  tray,  "Thanks, 
old  man. — L." 

It  was  a  clear  victory  for  Sonia,  but  she  was  sufficiently 
shame-faced  for  the  remainder  of  the  visit  to  make  me  think 
she  was  getting  little  pleasure  out  of  her  triumph.  From  time 
to  time  my  mother  asked  me  why  they  did  not  advance  the 
date  of  the  wedding,  but,  according  to  Sonia,  a  mischievous 
fairy  seemed  to  be  playing  tricks  with  the  calendar.  For  a 
marriage  in  Advent  Jim  would  require  dispensation;  Lady 
Loring  always  had  to  spend  the  early  months  of  the  year 
abroad;  "and  his  old  Pope  would  excommunicate  him," 
Sonia  told  me,  "if  he  tried  to  have  the  wedding  in  Lent.  And 
then  it  would  be  May,  and  then  some  other  Royalty  would  go 
and  die.  .  .  ." 

Until  my  conversation  with  her  I  had  in  my  ignorance 


LORING  285 

never  appreciated  how  strongly  the  position  of  the  celibate  was 
entrenched. 

O'Rane  arrived  at  the  end  of  the  following  week  and  asked 
whether  Jim  and  Sonia  were  still  with  me. 

"So  that  was  the  reason  of  your  wire,"  he  observed,  when 
I  told  him  they  had  left  on  the  Wednesday.  "Which  was  it?"  I 
asked  him  whether  he  had  had  a  good  crossing.  "Oh,  well, 
I  know  it  wasn't  Jim,"  he  said.  " '  Nous  devons  adorer  Dieu, 
mon  fils,  mais  c'est  un  grand  mystere  de  sa  providence  qu'il  ait 
cree  la  femme.' " 

"Perhaps  Jim  is  thinking  that  at  this  moment,"  I  said,  and 
the  subject  was  dropped. 

O'Rane's  visit  gave  me  my  first  opportunity  of  following 
up  the  Mexican  adventure  from  the  point  at  which  "Mr.  James 
Morris"  had  left  it.  The  company,  I  found,  had  been  launched 
successfully,  if  not  quite  at  Morris's  optimistic  valuation;  the 
mysterious  new  concession — "about  the  size  of  Scotland" — was 
promising  well,  though  the  working  expenses  were  unexpect- 
edly heavy.  I  gathered  that  the  partnership  was  drawing  a 
profit  of  15,000  dollars  a  year,  or,  in  English  money,  about 
fifteen  hundred  pounds  for  each  partner. 

"But  that's  all  in  Morris's  hands,"  said  O'Rane.  "I've  cut 
my  connexion  and  I'm  going  into  English  politics.  All  this 
time  since  I  met  you  I've  been  wandering  about,  listening  and 
watching.  This  country  is  disgustingly  rich,  George,  demor- 
alized by  it — from  the  Government  that  flings  millions  about 
in  fancy  social  reforms  to  the  mill-hand  who  wastes  shillings  a 
week  on  cinematograph  shows  and  roller-skating  rinks.  Utter- 
ly demoralized !  Nobody  cares  for  anything  but  extravagant 
pleasures ;  they  are  not  even  interested  in  the  House  of  Lords 
fight.  And  the  more  that's  spent  on  top  the  more  they  want  to 
spend  below.  That  revolution's  coming  all  right." 

"I  shall  believe  in  it  when  I  see  it,"  I  said. 

At  the  end  of  a  week  he  left  me,  as  ever,  without  a  hint 
where  he  was  going  or  what  he  proposed  to  do.  I  stayed  at 
Lake  House  till  the  second  election  of  1910,  when  Bertrand 
telegraphed  to  me  to  come  and  help  him.  Loring  dined  with 
me  at  the  Club  one  night  when  the  election  was  over,  and  sug- 


286  SONIA 

gested  that  I  should  accompany  his  mother,  sister,  the  Daintons 
and  himself  to  the  South  of  France.  The  invitation  was  half- 
hearted, and  I  felt  I  had  better  wait  until  the  process  of  rub- 
bing off  the  corners  was  nearer  completion.  They  left  in  Jan- 
uary and  returned  in  the  first  week  in  March.  I  was  apprised 
of  their  presence  in  London  by  a  special  messenger,  who  pur- 
sued me,  note  in  hand,  from  Princes  Gardens  to  the  House, 
where  I  had  been  dining  with  my  uncle,  and  from  the  house  to 
the  Eclectic  Club. 

The  note  was  in  Loring's  writing  and  begged  me  to  come 
at  once  to  Curzon  Street. 

"I  suppose  they've  fixed  the  date  at  last,"  I  said  to  Bert- 
rand  as  he  dropped  me  on  his  way  home.  "Now  I  shall  be 
stuck  with  the  privilege  of  being  best  man." 

VII 

It  was  after  midnight  when  I  arrived  at  Loring  House. 
Jim  was  in  the  library,  walking  restlessly  up  and  down  and 
filling  the  fireplace  with  half -smoked  cigarettes.  He  was  in. 
evening  dress,  and  an  overcoat  and  silk  hat  lay  on  the  arm 
of  a  sofa. 

"Come  in !"  he  exclaimed,  without  interrupting  his  caged- 
lion  walk.  "Sorry  to  drag  you  out  at  this  time  of  night. 
Have  a  drink?  Have  something  to  smoke.  Sit  down,  won't 
you?" 

He  spoke  in  short,  staccato  sentences,  waving  a  hand  vague- 
ly in  the  direction  of  the  tantalus  and  cigars.  The  intensity  of 
his  manner  was  infectious :  I  pulled  up  a  chair  and  settled  my- 
self to  listen. 

Now  then "  I  began,  as  the  door  closed. 

"It's  .  .  .  it's  come,  George !"  he  stammered.  "I'm  up  to 
my  neck,  and  you're  the  only  man  who  can  pull  me  out." 

"Drive  ahead !"  I  said. 

"Sonia's  broken  it  off!" 

It  would  be  affectation  for  me  to  pretend  I  was  as  much 
surprised  as  Loring  expected  me  to  be.  The  engagement  had, 
in  my  eyes,  been  singularly  unsuitable  from  the  first,  and  one 


LORING  287 

or  both  seemed  destined  to  lead  a  life  of  misery ;  but  I  half 
thought  that  both  parties  would  go  through  with  the  marriage 
out  of  pride  or  obstinacy.  Loring  was  as  much  in  love  with 
Sonia  as  Sonia's  mother  was  in  love  with  his  position. 
Seemingly  I  had  underestimated  the  havoc  wrought  in  the 
girl's  nerves  by  her  years  of  crude  excitement. 

"Tell  me  as  much  as  you  think  fit,"  I  said.  "I'll  do  anything 
I  can." 

He  thought  for  a  moment,  as  if  uncertain  where  to  start. 

"It's  my  fault,"  he  began.  "I  can  see  that  now.  We 
oughtn't  to  have  made  the  engagement  so  long — neither  of 
us  could  stand  the  strain.  I  hurried  things  on  as  much  as  I 
could,  but  Sonia  ...  I  don't  know,  she  must  have  wondered 
where  it  was  all  leading  to.  I  rather  sickened  her,  I'm  afraid. 
You  see,  I  don't  know  much  about  women.  .  .  I've  met  any 
number,  of  course,  but  I  haven't  had  many  intimate  women 
friends.  They  never  interested  me  much  till  I  got  engaged  to 
her.  Consequently  I've  never  appreciated  their  likes  and  dis- 
likes. Case  in  point,  Sonia  told  me  last  week  that  she'd  scream 
if  I  called  her  'darling'  again.  Now  I  should  have  thought 
.  .  .  Well,  anyway,  it  seemed  quite  harmless  and  natural  to 
me.  ...  A  small  point,  but  it  just  shows  you  what  a  lot  of 
knowing  women  take.  .  .  .  Got  a  cigarette  on  you?" 

I  threw  him  my  case. 

"What  was  the  casus  belli?  I  asked,  but  for  the  moment 
he  would  not  be  drawn  from  his  generalizations. 

"I  think  it  was  partly  physical,  too,"  he  went  on.  "I  tired 
the  poor  child  out — rushing  round  and  seeing  people.  She 
couldn't  stand  the  strain.  And  she  saw  too  much  of  me.  .  .  . 
I  was  always  there,  dogging  her  steps.  .  .  .  She  couldn't  get 
away  from  me.  This  last  visit  to  the  Riviera  was  a  hopeless 
mistake  from  every  point  of  view." 

He  flung  away  the  cigarette  he  had  just  lighted.  We 
seemed  to  be  getting  gradually  nearer  something  tangible,  and, 
as  he  gazed  bewilderedly  round  to  see  where  he  had  put  my 
case,  I  asked,  "What  happened  out  there  ?" 

"Nothing,"  he  answered.  "It  was  to-night.  We  got  back 
this  afternoon  and  all  went  for  a  farewell  dinner  to  Brown's 


288  SONIA 

Hotel.  The  Daintons  are  stopping  there.  Sonia  was  very 
quiet  all  through  the  dinner  and,  when  my  mother  and  Amy 
went  home  and  we  were  left  alone  to  say  good-night,  she  said 
she'd  got  something  to  tell  me.  I  waited,  she  hummed  and 
hawed  a  bit  and  then  asked  me  what  the  rule  in  our  Church 
was  about  the  children  of  mixed  marriages.  I  told  her  they 
had  to  be  brought  up  as  Catholics. 

"  'And  what  happens  if  I  object?'  she  asked. 

"I  told  her  I  couldn't  get  a  dispensation  for  the  marriage 
at  all  unless  she  gave  me  an  undertaking  to  this  effect."  He 
paused  in  pathetic  bewilderment.  "I  can't  understand  her 
raising  the  question  at  all  at  this  time  of  day;  I  explained 
the  whole  position  to  her  before  we  became  engaged,  and  she 
didn't  object  then. 

"  'Well,'  she  said,  'I  can't  consent  to  have  my  children, 
brought  up  in  a  different  faith.'  " 

Loring  passed  his  hands  over  his  eyes  and  dropped  limply 
into  a  chair. 

"That  was  rather  a  facer  for  me,  George,"  he  went  on. 
"Either  we  had  to  marry  without  a  dispensation — and  that 
meant  excommunication  for  me — or  we  couldn't  get  married 
at  all.  I  thought  it  over  very  carefully.  I'm  a  precious  bad 
Catholic.  ...  I  mean,  I've  been  brought  up  in  the  Church,  and 
we  all  of  us  always  have  been  Catholics,  but  I  don't  believe 
half  the  doctrines  and  I  don't  go  to  church  once  in  a  blue 
moon.  I  call  myself  one,  just  as  you  call  yourself  a  member  of 
the  Church  of  England.  We're  probably  both  of  us  'Nothing- 
arians,' only  we  don't  recant  or  make  a  fuss  about  it.  ... 
I  began  to  wonder  if  I  could  tell  'em  to  excommunicate  me  and 
be  damned.  It  would  mean  an  awful  wrench.  My  mother 
takes  it  all  very  seriously,  and  we  English  Catholic  families 
all  hang  together  rather,  and  I'm  a  Count  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  I  tell  you,  I  didn't  half 
like  doing  it,  but  it  seemed  the  only  thing,  and  eventually 
I  told  Sonia  I'd  lump  the  dispensation  and  risk  the  conse- 
quences." 

He  paused  and  lit  another  cigarette. 

"I  thought  that  would  have  ended  the  trouble,"  he  went 


LORING  289 

on,  with  a  sigh.  "It  seemed  to  be  only  the  beginning.  She 
was  awfully  good  about  it  at  first  and  said  she  couldn't 
make  discord  between  my  family  and  myself.  I  told  her  I 
was  very  fond  of  my  mother,  but  that  I  was  fonder  of  her 
than  of  anybody  in  the  world.  Then  ...  I  don't  know,  I 
couldn't  follow  her  .  .  .  she  started  on  another  tack  altogether 
and  said  I  should  always  be  a  Catholic  at  heart  and  that  I 
should  try  to  go  back  to  the  Church  and  take  the  children 
with  me.  .  .  .  These  damned  unborn  children  .  .  .  !  I 
told  her — as  much  as  I  could  cram  into  three  sentences — 
what  my  whole  attitude  towards  religion  boiled  down  to. 
And  then  the  row  started.  We  both  of  us  talked  together, 
and  neither  of  us  listened  to  the  other  or  finished  our  argu- 
ments, and  at  the  end  of  half  an  hour  Sonia  began  to  cry, 
and  I  felt  a  perfect  brute,  and  it  ended  with  her  sending  me 
away  and  saying  she  could  never  marry  a  man  who  didn't  be- 
lieve in  God." 

Loring  mopped  his  forehead. 

"I  feel  absolutely  done  in,"  he  murmured. 

I  mixed  him  a  generous  whisky  and  soda  and  asked  what 
he  wanted  done.  His  face  was  haggard,  and  for  a  big  man  he 
seemed  suddenly  dried  up  and  shrivelled. 

"You  must  go  round  and  talk  to  her,"  he  said.  "You've 
known  her  since  she  was  a  kid.  Explain  that  I  didn't  mean 
what  I  said,  apologize  for  me " 

I  shook  my  head. 

"It'll  do  no  good,"  I  said.    "You're  not  to  blame." 

"But  my  dear  fellow !"  he  began  excitedly,  as  though 

I  had  paid  no  attention  to  what  he  had  told  me. 

"Look  it  in  the  face,  Jim,"  I  said,  shaking  my  head  again. 
"She's  tired  of  you." 

He  picked  up  his  tumbler  and  then  put  it  down  untasted. 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  he  answered,  with  sublime  simplicity. 

"You've  got  to." 

"But — but — but,"  he  stammered.  "We've  never  had  a 
shadow  of  a  disagreement  until  to-night." 

"You  didn't  see  it  and  you  always  gave  way  and  smoothed 
things  over." 


290  SONIA 

"There  never  was  anything  to  smooth  over.    Till  this  in- 
fernal religious  question  started " 

"It  was  religion  to-day,  it'll  be  the  colour  of  your  eyes  or 
the  shape  of  your  nose  to-morrow." 

Loring  stared  at  me  as  though  suspicious  of  an  ill-timed 
humour. 

"You're  wrong,  George,  absolutely  wrong.     I  know  you're 
wrong." 

I  shrugged  my  shoulders  and  left  it  at  that. 

"I'll  do  whatever  you  think  best,"  I  said. 

"I  knew  you  would!"  he  exclaimed  eagerly.  "Well,  I've 
told  you.  You  must  go  round  to-morrow  morning " 

"And  if  she  refuses  to  see  me?" 

"She  won't!" 

"///'  I  persisted. 

Loring  jumped  up  excitedly. 

"My  dear  chap,  she  simply  musn't  break  off  the  engage- 
ment! Leave  me  out  of  it,  tell  her  only  to  consider  her  own 
position."  He  paused  in  fresh  embarrassment.  "You  remem- 
ber the  trouble  over  that  swine  Crabtree?"  he  went  on  diffi- 
dently. "We  can't  have  a  repetition  of  that!  You  know  as 
well  as  I  do,  a  girl  who's  always  breaking  off  engagements 
.  .  .  Get  her  to  look  at  it  from  that  point  of  view !" 

I  rose  up  and  dusted  the  ash  from  my  shirt-front. 

"She's  tired  of  you,"  I  repeated,  with  all  the  brutal  direct- 
ness I  could  put  into  my  tone. 

"Well — and  if  she  is?"  The  tone  no  less  than  the  words 
hinted  that  he  might  be  beginning  to  share  my  opinion. 

"You  want  the  engagement  renewed  on  those  terms  ?" 

"I  don't  want  the  Crabtree  business  over  again?"  he  an- 
swered, fencing  with  my  question. 

"I'll  call  on  her  to-morrow,"  I  said,  "unless  you  ring  me 
up  before  ten." 

At  eleven  next  morning  I  called  at  Brown's  Hotel.  The 
porter  who  sent  up  my  name  brought  back  word  that  Miss 
Dainton  regretted  she  was  unable  to  see  me.  On  receipt  of  my 
report  Loring  sent  round  a  letter  by  the  hand  of  one  of  his 
footmen.  Lady  Dainton  drove  to  Curzon  Street  between 


LORING  291 

twelve  and  one  and  was  closeted  with  Loring  for  half  an 
hour.  What  took  place  at  the  interview  I  have  never  inquired. 
Loring  came  into  the  library  at  the  end  of  it  with  a  sheet  of 
notepaper  in  his  hand.  His  face  was  white,  and  there  were 
dark  rings  under  his  eyes. 

"Get  this  into  the  papers  for  me,  will  you?"  he  said  dis- 
passionately. "It's  no  good,  she's  immovable.  I'm  going  away 
for  a  bit.  We'd  better  not  run  the  risk  of  meeting  for  the  pres- 
ent. I'm  starting  at  once,  by  the  way,  so  I'm  not  likely  to  see 
you  again  before  I  go.  I'm  more  grateful  than  I  can  say  for 
all  you've  done.  Good-bye." 

As  I  drove  down  to  Printing  House  Square  I  glanced  at  the 
sheet  of  paper.  "The  marriage  arranged  between  the  Mar- 
quess Loring  and  Miss  Sonia  Dainton,"  it  ran,  "will  not  take 
place." 

That  night  I  had  some  difficulty  in  getting  to  sleep.  The 
"Maxims"  of  the  Due  de  la  Rochefoucauld  lay  on  the  table 
by  my  bed,  and  I  opened  the  book  at  random. 

"It  is  commonly  the  Fault  of  People  in  Love,"  wrote  that 
polished  cynic,  "that  they  are  not  sensible  when  they  cease 
to  be  beloved." 


CHAPTER    VI 


THE   YEARS   OF    CARNIVAL 


"If,  drunk  with  sight  of  power,  we  loose 

Wild  tongues  that  have  not  thee  in  awe — 
Such  boasting  as  the  Gentiles  use 

Or  lesser  breeds  without  the  Law — 
Lord  God  of  Hosts,  be  with  us  yet, 
Lest  we  forget,  lest  we  forget!" 

RUDYARD  KIPLING,  "Recessional. 


LE  Roy  est  mort ;  vive  le  Roy ! 
King  Edward  was  mourned  a  twelvemonth,  and 
in  the  spring  of  the  following  year  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men  gathered  to  do  honour  to  his  successor.  Before 
the  first  hammer  beat  on  the  first  Coronation  stand,  the  in- 
vasion of  London  had  begun:  from  Channel  to  Tweed  ran  a 
whisper  of  social  schemings — a  daughter's  presentation,  a  ball, 
a  house  in  town  for  the  Season.  Our  solid,  self-conscious  race, 
never  gay  for  gaiety's  sake,  reached  out  and  grasped  the  excuse 
for  innocent  dissipation.  The  last  five  years  had  been  so 
charged  with  political  acrimony,  the  world  had  worked  itself 
into  so  great  a  passion  over  the  Budgets  and  Second  Chambers. 
Three  months  respite  was  a  prospect  alluring  to  the  straitest 
Puritan. 

My  uncle  Bertrand  had  hoped  that  a  year  of  mourning 

292 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  293 

would  tempt  his  countrymen  to  regard  politics  as  a  serious 
study  rather  than  a  pretext  for  vulgar  abuse.  Seldom  have 
I  watched  the  death  of  a  vainer  hope,  for  the  world  flung  off 
its  black  clothes  and  prepared  for  carnival.  Apaches  plotted 
new  raids,  strange-tongued  provincials  rubbed  shoulders  with 
American  tourists,  Colonial  Prime  Ministers  jostled  you  in  the 
streets  or  appropriated  your  favorite  table  at  the  restaurants. 

For  a  time  I  sought  refuge  in  the  Club — and  found  it  was 
no  refuge.  Members  were  balloting  for  seats  to  view  the  pro- 
cession or  discussing  Adolf  Erckmann's  prospects  in  the 
Coronation  Honours  List.  Erckmann  himself  was  very  promi- 
nent, and  the  capture  of  London,  which  he  largely  effected  in 
the  next  three  or  four  years,  started  with  his  acquisition  of  a 
title.  Perhaps  he  tried  to  capture  the  Eclectic  Club — I  certain- 
ly remember  being  asked  to  blackball  three  of  his  candidate*. 
If  so,  he  failed;  the  most  mediaeval  club  in  the  world  was 
strong  to  resist  the  most  modern  social  impresario.  And  this 
I  regard  with  satisfaction  when  I  consider,  in  moments  of 
sombre  retrospection,  how  the  tone  of  England  has  become 
modernized  in  the  last  half  generation.  Sir  John  Woburn 
and  the  Press  Combine  modernized  journalism ;  Vandale,  Ben- 
dix  and  Trosser  modernized  the  House  of  Commons,  as  any- 
one will  agree  who  recalls  the  three  scandals  associated  with 
their  names — squalid,  financial  scandals,  lacking  the  scale  an(J 
dignity  of  Central  American  corruption ;  and  Erckmann  mod- 
ernized London  Society.  It  was  a  brilliant,  gaudy  thing  when 
he  left  it,  yet  I  almost  preferred  the  old  state  when  the  loudest 
voice  and  longest  purse  did  not  necessarily  go  the  furthest. 

From  time  to  time  I  saw  something  of  his  conquering 
march.  My  mother  and  sister  came  over  for  the  Coronation, 
and  we  suffered  the  season  patiently.  Of  course  we  gave  a 
ball ;  equally  'of  course,'  it  was  at  the  Ritz,  for  the  Ritz  at  this 
time  was  an  article  of  faith.  If  a  hostess  wanted  men,  she 
must  entertain  there ;  if  a  man  wanted  supper,  he  must  secure 
an  invitation  by  hook  or  by  crook — or  else  walk  in  without  it. 

"Otherwise  you  get  no  food,"  as  my  barbarian  young  cousin, 
Greville  Hunter-Oakleigh,  confessed  to  me  one  night  at  the 
Monagasc  Minister's  ball  in  Grosvenor  Gardens.  He  had 


294  SONIA 

danced  dutifully  with  "all  the  right  people,"  and  was  now  go- 
ing on  with  Violet,  Summertown  and  two  brother  officers  in 
search  of  supper.  Greville  and  Violet  had  been  invited ;  Sum- 
mertown issued  invitations  to  the  others  on  the  principle  that 
hostesses  were  always  glad  of  a  few  extra  men. 

"You're  so  damned  William-and-Maryish,"  he  complained, 
when  I  refused  to  come  without  a  card.  "If  you  won't,  you 
won't,  but  they're  frightfully  rich  and  they'll  do  you  awfully 
well.  So  long.  We  shall  be  back  in  a  couple  of  hours." 

He  hurried  away,  and  I  set  myself  to  protect  my  sister 
Beryl  from  Lady  Ullswater,  who  was  marking  her  down  as  a 
new-comer  and  angling  for  the  privilege  of  chaperoning  her. 
Before  our  ball  took  place  I  had  an  offer  of  the  whole  Brigade 
from  John  Ashwell,  but  we  thought  it  would  be  amusing  to 
make  our  own  ararngements.  A  number  of  people  strayed 
in  without  being  asked,  but  this  was  in  some  sense  balanced 
by  our  being  able  to  refuse  invitations  to  a  host  of  Erckmann's 
proteges. 

Erckmann  himself — Sir  Adolf,  as  he  became — we  were 
compelled  to  invite  out  of  compliment  to  Lady  Dainton.  For 
some  time  her  husband  had  been  observable  at  the  Eclectic 
Club,  lunching  with  Erckmann  and  consuming  an  amount  of 
champagne  and  Corona  cigars  that  argued  business  discussion. 
There  followed  an  issue  of  new  companies  with  the  name 
of  Sir  Roger  Dainton,  Bart.,  M.P.,  on  the  prospectus;  later 
I  met  Erckmann  at  dinner  in  Rutland  Gate;  later  still  the 
Daintons  took  a  moor.  It  was  one  of  those  rare  business  as- 
sociations in  which  everyone  secured  what  he  wanted.  I  my- 
self, a  mere  private  in  a  stage  army,  was  invited  to  join  a 
party  for  Ober-Ammergau,  and,  if  I  declined  to  witness  a 
Passion  Play  in  Erckmann's  company,  my  refusal  was  prompt- 
ed less  by  social  prejudice  than  by  superstitious  scruple. 

At  first  I  was  mildly  surprised  to  find  the  Daintons  so  much 
in  public  so  soon  after  Sonia's  engagement  had  been  broken 
off;  but  the  longer  I  lived  in  London  the  more  people  I 
found  skirmishing  to  get  away  from  other  people  and  on 
one  occasion  in  Coronation  week,  I  remember  seeing  Loring, 
Crabtree,  O'Rane  and  Sonia  under  the  same  roof.  In  prac- 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  295 

tice,  however,  they  kept  apart  without  undue  contrivance. 
Crabtree  became  engaged  at  this  time  to  Mrs.  Pauncefote, 
widow  of  the  Staffordshire  brewer  and  a  woman  some  eleven 
years  his  senior ;  he  was  now  in  a  position  to  woo  the  electors 
of  the  Brinton  Division,  and  little  was  seen  of  him  in  London. 
O'Rane,  on  the  rare  occasions  when  I  met  him  hurrying  to 
or  from  the  Continent,  diving  into  the  Conservative  Central 
Office  or  disappearing  into  the  industrial  north,  maintained 
an  attitude  of  mystery  and  would  tell  me  nothing  of  his  move- 
ments. He  was  incessantly  restless  and  as  self-absorbed  as 
ever,  but  the  lines  of  his  old,  clear-cut  scheme  of  life  had  lost 
something  of  their  sharpness.  His  breach  with  the  past 
seemed  almost  complete,  marked  in  black  and  white — or  so  I 
fancied — by  a  letter  I  had  given  him  to  read  twelve  months 
before  at  the  Charing  Cross  Hotel.  At  the  end  of  the  season 
he  and  Sonia  met  at  the  Embassy  Ball ;  they  bowed  and  passed 
on.  Then  his  eyes  sought  mine  as  though  wondering  what 
were  my  thoughts.  I  made  some  comment  on  her  dress ; 
he  made  no  answering  comment  at  all. 

As  for  Loring,  I  hardly  saw  him  from  the  spring  of  1911, 
when  he  hurried  abroad,  to  the  spring  of  1914,  when  he 
returned.  As  a  matter  of  form  he  came  back  for  the  Cor- 
onation, but  did  not  stay  an  hour  more  than  was  necessary. 
Summertown,  never  a  veracious  chronicler,  worked  up  a  pic- 
turesque story  of  the  yacht  moored  by  Hungerford  Bridge, 
and  its  owner  changing  out  of  his  robes  as  he  drove  down  the 
Embankment  and  dropping  his  coronet  into  the  river  in  his 
haste  to  get  away  from  England.  I  have  but  a  confused 
idea  where  he  went  during  those  three  years,  and  the  question 
is  immaterial.  The  important  thing  is  that  he  was  absent 
from  London  at  a  time  when  London  was  almost  oppressively 
full  of  Sonia  Dainton. 

She  was  on  the  defensive  when  we  first  met,  as  though 
expecting  me  to  blame  her  for  the  broken  engagement.  When, 
as  was  natural,  I  said  nothing,  she  developed  a  curious  reck- 
lessness and  gave  me  to  understand  that,  whosever  the  fault, 
she  did  not  care  a  snap  of  the  fingers  for  the  consequences. 
It  was  partly  pose,  I  think,  and  partly  a  very  modern  refusal 


296  SONIA 

to  allow  her  feelings  to  be  stirred  below  the  surface,  partly 
also  the  manner  and  spirit  of  her  surroundings.  I  always 
fancy  I  saw  a  change  in  her  from  the  day  when  Lady  Dainton 
relaxed  her  social  severity  and  opened  her  doors  to  Erck- 
mann  and  his  cortege.  With  her  catchwords,  her  volubility 
and  over-ready  laugh,  something  of  hysteria  seemed  to  have 
crept  into  her  life.  Whatever  the  entertainment,  she  was 
among  the  first  to  arrive  and  the  last  to  go,  dancing  hard, 
supping  heartily,  talking  incessantly,  laughing  gustily  and 
smoking  with  fine  abandon.  Hourly  new  excitement,  prostra- 
tion, forgetfulness — that  seemed  the  formula. 

"What  happens  on  Sundays,  Sonia?"  I  once  asked  her, 
when  we  met  for  supper  and  a  discussion  of  our  day's  work. 

"I  take  laudanum,"  was  the  answer. 

It  was  true  in  spirit;  it  may  even  have  been  true  in  fact. 
I  was  often  reminded  of  a  chorus  girl  I  once  saw  in  under- 
graduate days  at  a  Covent  Garden  Ball,  whirling  through  the 
night — like  Sonia — from  one  till  three,  and  at  four  o'clock 
lying  asleep  in  a  box  with  her  cheek  on  her  arm,  oblivious 
and — I  hope — happy;  in  any  case  too  weary  to  dream  what 
the  future  might  hold.  Looking  back  on  the  four  years  of 
carnival  that  ended  with  the  war,  I  seem  to  find  in  Sonia  the 
embodiment  of  the  age's  spirit. 

"You  know  how  that  sort  of  thing  ends,  I  suppose?"  I 
took  occasion  to  ask. 

"Oh,  don't  be  heavy,  George!"  she  exclaimed  impatiently. 
"We  can  only  die  once." 

"To  some  extent  we  can  postpone  the  date,"  I  suggested. 

"Who  wants  to?  A  short  life  and  a  merry  one.  This  is 
a  dull  show,  you  know.  How  do  you  come  to  be  here?" 

"My  name  was  gleaned  from  an  obsolete  work  of  refer- 
ence," I  said,  producing  a  card  with  'M.P.'  on  it.  "And  you?" 

"Oh,  I  wasn't  selected  at  all.  Fatty  Webster  smuggled 
me  in."  She  dropped  her  voice  confidentially.  "George,  this 
is  a  deadly  secret.  Mrs.  Marsden,  who's  responsible  for  this 
— this  funeral,  told  mother  she  wanted  to  break  down  the 
exclusiveness  of  London  Society " 

"Many  taunts  have  been  hurled  at  that  indeterminate  class," 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  297 

I  observed.    "No  one  ever  called  it  exclusive  before." 

"It's  exclusive  if  you're  from  Yorkshire,  like  her,  with 
a  perfectly  poisonous  taste  in  dress.  Well,  all  the  girls  come 
from  Highgate  Ponds — Lord  Summertown  told  me  so " 

"He  ought  to  know,"  I  said. 

"And  all  the  men  from  Turnham  Green.  You  know,  where 
the  buses  come  from.  Fatty  Webster  heard  what  it  was  going 
to  be  like,  so  he  and  Sam  and  Lord  Summertown  went  off 
to  Fatty's  rooms  in  Albemarle  Street;  they've  changed  into 
corduroys  and  red  handkerchiefs,  and  they're  pulling  up  Pic- 
cadilly in  solid  chunks  with  pickaxes.  It's  the  greatest  fun 
in  life.  I  went  to  see  them  half  an  hour  ago.  They've  got 
lanterns  and  ropes  and  things,  and  they're  doing  frightful 
damage.  And  the  best  of  it  is  that  it's  pouring  with  rain  and 
none  of  the  cars  can  get  to  either  door." 

"As  a  law-abiding  citizen,  I  think  it's  my  duty  to  warn 
the  police,"  I  said. 

"Oh,  you  mustn't!    You'll  get  Sam  into  a  frightful  row." 

"That  I  don't  mind  if  Webster  spends  a  night  in  the  cells. 
Sonia,  he's  a  dreadful  young  man.  Where  did  you  find  him?" 

"He's  a  friend  of  Sir  Adolf's.  He's  rather  a  sport,  really, 
and  enormously  rich." 

"He  was  richer  a  week  ago." 

"You  mean  before  the  breach  of  promise  case?  I  suppose 
so.  Honestly,  if  Fatty  proposed  to  me,  I  should  slap  his  face, 
but  if  he  had  the  presumption  to  back  out  of  it — my  word !" 

"He's  too  much  like  the  domestic  pig,"  I  objected. 

"Oh,  he's  quite  harmless  and  very  useful.  He  cadged 
me  an  invitation  for  the  Embassy  Ball.  Are  you  going?" 

"I've  been  invited,"  I  said. 

There  the  subject  dropped,  for  I  had  promised  to  go  with 
O'Rane  and  was  not  sure  how  he  would  take  the  news  thai; 
Sonia  also  was  to  be  present.  Still  in  the  enigmatic  mood,  he 
shrugged  his  shoulders  and  informed  me  that  his  acceptance 
had  gone  forth,  and  he  proposed  to  abide  by  it.  I  raised  no 
further  objection  as  the  ball  promised  to  be  amusing.  It 
was  a  limited  liability  entertainment,  floated  by  a  number  of 
diplomatic  underlings,  and,  as  some  difficulty  was  experienced 


298  SONIA1 

in  securing  invitations,  there  was  an  orgy  of  subterfuge, 
intrigue  and  bribery  on  the  part  of  aspirants.  One  of  the 
Russian  attaches  confided  to  me  that  he  could  have  lunched 
and  dined  in  four  different  places  every  day  after  the  an- 
nouncement was  made  in  the  Press  and  stayed  in  six  several 
houses  for  Goodwood.  There  was  considerable  overlapping, 
and,  if  some  received  no  invitations,  others  received  many. 
O'Rane,  who  had  known  more  Ambassadors  before  he  was 
five  than  most  men  meet  in  a  lifetime,  had  cards  sent  him 
from  three  Embassies  and  four  Legations.  It  is  perhaps 
superfluous  to  mention  that  of  these  the  Austrian  was  not  one. 

If  there  be  any  justification  for  such  a  ball,  it  surely  lies 
in  a  certain  brilliancy  of  stage-management.  The  Embassy 
Ball  was  well  stage-managed.  As  we  drove  into  its  neigh- 
bourhood, a  double  line  of  cars  was  stretching  from  end  to 
end  of  Brook  Street,  with  one  tail  bending  down  Park  Lane 
to  Hamilton  Place  and  the  other  forking  and  losing  itself 
in  Hanover  Square.  The  pavements  outside  Claridge's  were 
thronged  with  eager,  curious  spectators,  their  lean  faces 
white  in  the  blinding  glare  of  strong  head-lights.  Excited 
whispers  and  an  occasional  half-timid  cheer  greeted  the  ap- 
pearance of  figures  familiar  in  politics  or  on  the  Turf.  It 
was  the  night  of  the  Westmoreland  House  reception,  and  uni- 
forms, medals  and  orders  flashed  in  brave  rivalry  with  the 
aigrettes  and  blue-white,  shimmering  diamonds  of  the  women* 
A  warm  fragrance  of  blending  perfumes  floated  through  the 
open  portals  into  the  courtyard,  and  with  the  slamming  of 
doors,  the  swish  of  skirts  and  the  clear  high  babble  of  voices 
came  mingling  the  distant  wail  of  the  violins  and  the  dreamy, 
half-heard  cadence  of  a  waltz. 

"After  the  railway  strike  this  is  rather  refreshing,"  I  said 
to  O'Rane,  as  we  advanced  inch  by  inch  towards  the  door- 
way where  Count  Ristori,  the  doyen  of  the  Corps  Diplo- 
matique, was  receiving  on  behalf  of  his  colleagues. 

"And  instructive,"  he  added. 

"Your  revolution  hasn't  come  off  yet,  Raney,"  I  said,  in 
the  intervals  of  catching  the  eyes  of  the  Daintons  and  bowing 
to  them. 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  299 

"Nor  my  war.  Perhaps  they'll  balance  each  other  and 
leave  us  to  enjoy — this  kind  of  thing.  You  know  how  it 
ended?  Men's  demands  granted,  owners  given  a  free  hand 
to  recoup  themselves  by  raising  freights.  D'you  know  why 
it  ended?" 

"It  had  gone  beyond  a  joke,"  I  said. 

The  Daintons  had  been  compelled  to  cancel  a  week-end 
party  at  Crowley  Court  owing  to  the  impossibility  of  as- 
sembling their  guests. 

O'Rane  laid  his  hand  confidentially  on  my  shoulder. 

"I'm  told,"  he  said, — "all  my  information  comes  from  this 
Embassy  crowd, — I'm  told  Germany  was  preparing  to  strike 
at  France  and  collar  the  whole  country  north  of  a  line  to 
Cherbourg.  We  couldn't  have  stood  that.  But  if  we'd  de- 
clared war  with  the  strike  on — whew !  you  couldn't  have  trans- 
ported man  or  gun." 

"A  pretty  story,"  I  commented.  "I  don't  believe  it.  Do 
you?" 

"Oh,  what  does  it  matter  what  I  believe?  You  think 
I'm  revolution-mad.  The  threat  of  war  ended  the  strike, 
the  end  of  the  strike  postponed  the  war.  Vive  la  bagatelle!" 
He  gripped  my  arm  and  his  voice  quickened  and  rose  till 
our  neighbours  turned  round  and  smiled  in  amused  surprise. 
"George,  I  wonder  if  it  was  like  this  in  the  last  days  of  the 
Ancien  Regime — a  year  before  the  Revolution  and  six  before 
Napoleon.  Marie  Antoinette  and  Count  Fersen  the  first  couple, 
the  Court  following  in  beautiful  brocaded  dresses,  with  patches 
and  powdered  hair,  and  blue  and  silver  and  rose-red  coats, 
and  lace  cuffs  and  silk  stockings  and  buckled  shoes.  Such 
manners !  And  such  corruption  of  soul !  Peaceful,  secure, 
unheeding.  And  outside  the  Palace  a  line  of  gilt  coaches. 
And  running  under  the  horses'  heads  for  a  glimpse  of  the 
clothes  and  jewels — the  tiers  etat"  He  smiled  ironically  and 
shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  'En  effet,  Us  sont  des  hommes.' 
Was  it  like  this  ?" 

"It  was  like  this  again  ten  years  after  the  Revolution  and 
ten  days  after  Waterloo — when  corruption  ought  to  have  been 
purged  out  of  the  world." 


300  SONIA 

"But  will  nothing  make  these  people  see  the  tiers  etat 
at  their  door?" 

"I  saw  them  myself.    What  is  one  to  do?" 

"Mon  dieu!" 

"That's  no  answer,  Raney,"  I  said. 

"The  answer  was  given  you  nearly  two  thousand  years 
ago." 

A  moment  later  we  were  bowing  over  the  hand  of  Count 
Ristori.  Then  the  queue  behind  us  pressed  forward,  and 
we  were  separated.  Several  hours  elapsed  before  we  met 
again,  though  he  was  rarely  out  of  my  sight.  Indeed,  I  fol- 
lowed his  movements  rather  closely  and  made  a  discovery. 
Sonia  gave  me  a  dance,  and  when  it  was  over  we  sat  and 
watched  the  scene  from  two  chairs  by  an  open  window. 
There  was  a  formality  and  decorum  about  the  ball  that  evi- 
dently rather  irked  her :  and  from  her  tone  of  somewhat  pert 
disparagement  I  gathered  that  she  did  not  know  many  of 
the  people  present. 

"David's  all  over  the  Ambassadors,"  she  remarked,  with 
her  eyes  on  a  corner  where  he  was  standing  with  three  or 
four  be-ribboned  Secretaries. 

"That's  old  Dracopoli,"  I  told  her.  "He  was  in  command 
when  Raney's  father  was  wounded.  The  fat  little  man  with 
the  high  cheek-bones  used  to  be  Russian  Minister  of  Finance." 

"I  had  no  idea  he  was  so  famous,"  she  drawled,  with  easy 
contempt. 

"I'm  inclined  to  think  Raney's  a  bigger  man  than  either 
of  us  gave  him  credit  for,"  I  said. 

And  that  was  my  discovery.  It  cleared  my  mind  of  a 
patronizing  friendliness  dating  from  the  time  when  I  was  a 
monitor  and  he  a  fag  at  Melton.  I  always  recognized  his 
mental  abilities  no  less  than  the  endurance  which  had  kept 
him  for  a  dozen  years  from  starving.  But  he  talked  so  much 
like  any  other  brilliant  Irish  boy,  he  was  so  exuberant  and 
unstable,  that  it  was  the  convention  not  to  take  him  seriously. 
That  night — and  under  my  eyes — he  seemed  to  be  coming 
into  his  kingdom.  It  was  almost  his  first  public  appearance 
in  England  since  boyhood,  and,  as  old  scandals  slipped  into 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  301 

oblivion,  the  friends  of  his  father  claimed  acquaintance  as 
my  uncle  had  done  six  years  before.  There  are  few  men  who 
have  before  their  twenty-sixth  birthday  made  all  the  money 
they  will  ever  need,  few  who  have  travelled  in  so  many 
countries  of  the  world  and  met  so  many  people.  That  was 
all  that  the  Claridge  ball-room  knew,  but  I  had  lived  in  close 
communion  with  him  for  several  years  and  could  have  written 
many  a  supplementary  chapter. 

"He's  clever,"  Sonia  admitted,  "but  he's  frightfully  selfish." 

"Have  you  met  his  partner — a  man  called  Morris?"  J 
asked.  "He's  the  man  to  discuss  Raney's  shortcomings  with 
you." 

"I  don't  want  to  discuss  them  with  anyone.  I  know. 
He's  absolutely  wrapped  up  in  himself  and  his  precious  dreams. 
George,  for  some  years  he  and  I  .  .  . " 

"I  know,"  I  interrupted.  "Once  when  you  dined  with  me 
at  the  House,  you  promised  some  day  to  tell  me  why  you 
didn't  end  your  ridiculous  boy-and-girl  engagement." 

Sonia  put  her  head  on  one  side  and  pouted. 

"To  be  quite  honest,"  she  said,  "I  was  secretly  rather 
afraid  of  him." 

"But  he's  the  gentlest  man  on  earth,  and  the  most  cour- 
teous." 

"If  you  do  what  he  wants ;  otherwise — if  you  wear  green 
when  he'd  like  you  to  wear  brown !" 

"But  all  this  is  hardly  a  reason  for  refusing  to  break  off 
the  engagement." 

"I  was  afraid  of  him,"  she  repeated. 

I  know  Sonia  well  enough  to  say  in  five  cases  out  of  twenty 
when  she  is  speaking  the  truth.  This  was  one. 

"Afraid  of  Raney  ?"  I  cried.    "Are  you  afraid  of  him  now  ?" 

"I've  not  seen  him  to  speak  to  for  years.  Until  tonight 
— and  then  we  only  bowed " 

"If  you  want  to  see  him  again,  you've  only  to  tell  him  so." 

She  threw  her  head  up  with  a  rare  expression  of  scorn. 

"How  kind!"  she  exclaimed.  "But  he's  far  too  lifty  to 
know  me  now,  even  if  I  was  in  the  habit " 

"Then  I  shall  never  know  whether  you're  still  afraid  of 


302  SONIA 

him,"  I  said.  "He'll  not  come  till  he's  sent  for — sent  for  and 
told  he's  wanted " 

"Is  this  a  message?"  she  demanded. 

"A  reminder,"  I  answered.  "Forgive  me,  but  you  have 
not  been  discussed  by  us  since  he  came  back  from  the  Con- 
tinent a  year  ago.  I  am  recalling  something  I  think  he  told 
you  over  at  Lake  House  before  he  went  to  Mexico." 

"Oh,  the  Butterfly  Life  Sermon?  He  gave  me  five  years 
to  outgrow  it,  didn't  he?  Tell  him — No."  The  first  bars 
of  a  waltz  were  starting,  and  the  two  ball-rooms  began  to  fill. 
A  corpulent,  red  young  man — I  knew  him  by  sight  as  young 
Webster — walked  sheepishly  to  our  window  and  stood  in 
front  of  us.  Sonia  looked  round  the  crowded  room  with  eager, 
bright  eyes,  pulled  the  straps  of  her  dress  higher  on  to  the 
shoulders  and  rose  to  her  feet.  "I'll  leave  you  to  make  up 
the  message,"  she  told  me ;  and  to  her  partner,  "Come  Fatty. 
Let's  take  the  floor  before  the  mob  gets  in." 

In  the  still  empty  room  they  executed  a  wonderful  stage- 
dance  of  dips  and  runs  and  eccentric  twinings.  As  O'Rane 
joined  me  by  the  open  window,  I  felt  there  was  no  need  to 
give  him  any  message. 

"Supper  or  bed?"  I  asked  him  as  I  glanced  at  my  watch. 

"Not  bed !"  he  answered,  with  a  touch  of  the  old  exultant 
joy  in  existence  that  I  had  not  seen  since  his  early  days  at 
Oxford.  "I'm  having  the  time  of  my  life,  George.  I'm 
dam'  good  at  this  sort  of  thing.  First  of  all  I  danced  with 
Amy  Loring  and  didn't  tear  her  dress.  Then  I  found  a  Con- 
servative Whip " 

"Are  you  really  standing?" 

"Don't  interrupt !  I  invited  Lady  Dainton  to  have  supper 
twice,  and  she  accepted  both  times.  I  asked  perfect  strangers 
to  dance  with  me  on  the  ground  that  I'd  met  their  brothers 
in  Hong-Kong.  I  cadged  cigarettes  from  other  perfect 
strangers,  and  I  carried  out  a  First  Secretary's  wife  in  a 
fainting  condition." 

"You  take  a  very  frivolous  view  of  life,"  I  observed,  as 
I  ordered  some  poached  eggs  and  beer. 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  303 

"It's  all  right.    I  shan't  come  here  again,"  he  answered. 

"But  I  thought  you  were  enjoying  yourself?" 

He  drummed  on  the  table  with  his  fingers  and  smiled 
round  the  room. 

"So  I  am,"  he  said.  "If  you'd  ever  been  as  poor  as  a  rat, 
you'd  know  what  it  feels  like  to  have  money  to  burn !"  His 
black  eyes  suddenly  shone  with  anger,  and  his  fingers  ceased 
their  idle  drumming.  "If  you'd  ever  had  your  birth  flung 
in  your  teeth " 

"Don't  you  ever  forget  anything,  Raney?"  I  asked  in  his 
sudden,  fierce  pause. 

"Nothing,  old  man.  Not  a  line  of  a  book  I've  ever  read 
nor  the  letter  of  a  word  a  man's  ever  said  to  me.  I — I've 
been  taken  on  my  merits  here  to-night.  I  don't  want  to  forget 
anything.  After  all,  if  you  forget  what  it's  like  to  go  through 
one  or  two  circles  of  Hell,  you  haven't  much  pity  for  the 
souls  that  are  still  suffering  there." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  I  asked. 

"Follow  my  destiny,"  he  answered,  with  his  black  eyes 
gazing  into  the  distance. 

"So  you  told  me  some  years  ago  when  the  Daintons  gave 
their  first  ball  at  the  Empire  Hotel." 

"And  haven't  I  kept  my  word?  I've  been  finding  the 
means,  and  you  know  the  twin  obsessions  of  my  mind." 

"War  and  a  revolution?" 

He  nodded,  and  looked  round  the  supper-room. 

"There's  a  lot  worth  saving,  George;  it's  the  greatest 
country  in  the  world.  But  there's  a  lot  to  be  rooted  out. 
People  won't  recognize  that  civilization  can  never  be  station- 
ary.'* He  waved  his  hand  rhythmically  in  time  with  the  music. 
"Backwards  or  forwards.  Backwards  or  forwards.  And 
coming  here  after  some  years  abroad,  everything  I  see  makes 
me  think  we're  sliding  backwards." 

n 

Though  O'Rane  gave  me  no  more  than  a  couple  of  veiled 
hints,  he  was  at  this  time  in  train  to  be  adopted  as  a  Con- 
servative candidate.  There  was  a  certain  irony  in  the  son 
of  the  last  Lord  O'Rane  standing  in  such  an  interest,  but  the 


304  SONIA 

House  of  Commons  has  little  use  for  non-party  men,  and  he 
was  now  more  closely  connected  with  the  National  Service 
and  Navy  Leagues  than  with  any  Liberal  organization. 

The  irony  would  have  been  completer  if  the  swift  changes 
of  politics  had  not  delayed  his  election.  It  was  not  till  the 
early  spring  of  1914  that  he  took  his  seat,  and  his  place  by 
this  time  was  on  the  Ministerial  side.  The  volte-face  sounds 
more  abrupt  than  it  really  was  if  it  be  remembered  that  he 
never  had  more  than  one  object  in  view  at  a  time.  Political 
gossip  in  the  days  of  the  Agadir  incident  said  that  part  of 
the  Cabinet  was  ready  for  war  while  another  part  asserted 
that  our  warlike  preparations  were  inadequate.  From  that 
moment  O'Rane's  mind  was  set  on  seeing  the  country  put 
into  such  training  that  it  would  not  be  found  wanting  if  a 
similar  crisis  arose  in  the  future. 

When  he  finally  went  to  the  electors  of  Yateley,  the  focus 
of  public  interest  had  changed.  The  surface  of  diplomacy 
was  unruffled;  the  Tripoli  Campaign  and  the  two  Balkan 
wars  had  dragged  to  an  end  without  involving  any  of  the 
Great  Powers,  and  my  uncle's  confidence  rose  from  strength  to 
strength  at  the  confirmation  of  his  favourite  doctrine  that 
modern  war  was  too  vast  and  complex  for  a  first  class  power 
to  undertake. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  condition  of  England  was  a  matter 
for  considerable  searching  of  heart.  A  spirit  of  unrest  and 
lawlessness,  a  neurotic  state  not  to  be  dissociated  from  the 
hectic,  long-drawn  Carnival  that  continued  from  month  to 
month  and  year  to  year,  may  be  traced  from  the  summer  of 
the  Coronation.  It  is  too  early  to  probe  the  cause  or  say  how 
far  the  staggering  ostentation  of  the  wealthy  fomented  the 
sullen  disaffection  of  the  poor.  It  is  as  yet  impossible  to  weigh 
the  merits  in  any  one  of  the  hysterical  controversies  of  the 
times.  Looking  back  on  those  four  years,  I  recall  the  House 
of  Lords  dispute  and  a  light  reference  to  blood  flowing  under 
Westminster  Bridge,  railway  and  coal  strikes  characterized 
by  equally  light  breach  of  agreements,  a  campaign  in  favour 
of  female  suffrage  marked  by  violence  to  person  and  destruc- 
tion to  property,  and  finally  a  wrangle  over  a  Home  Rule 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  305 

Bill  that  spread  far  beyond  the  walls  of  Westminster  and 
ended  in  the  raising  and  training  of  illegal  volunteer  armies 
in  Ireland.  Such  a  record  in  an  ostensibly  law-abiding 
country  gives  matter  for  reflection.  Sometimes  I  think  the 
cause  may  be  found  in  the  sudden  industrial  recovery  after 
ten  years'  depression  following  the  South  African  War.  The 
new  money  was  spent  in  so  much  riotous  living,  and  from  end 
to  end  there  settled  on  the  country  a  mood  of  fretful,  crapu- 
lous irritation.  'An  unpopular  law?  Disregard  it!'  That 
seemed  the  rule  of  life  with  a  people  that  had  no  object  but 
successive  pleasure  and  excitement  and  was  fast  becoming  a 
law  unto  itself. 

When,  therefore,  O'Rane  went  to  Yateley,  he  went  in  pro- 
test against  the  action  of  certain  officers  at  the  Curragh,  who, 
holding  the  King's  Commission  and  with  some  few  years  of 
discipline  behind  them,  let  it  be  known  that  in  the  event  of 
certain  orders  being  given  they  did  not  propose  to  obey  them. 
Then,  if  ever,  the  country  was  near  revolution;  I  still  recall 
the  astonishment  and  indignation  of  Radicalism  and  Labour. 
On  the  single  question  of  Parliamentary  control  of  the  Army, 
O'Rane  was  returned  for  a  constituency  that  had  almost  for- 
gotten the  sensation  of  being  represented  by  anyone  but  a 
Conservative. 

The  reason  why  two  and  a  half  years  elapsed  between  our 
conversation  at  the  Embassy  Ball  and  his  election  in  1914  has 
been  a  secret  in  the  keeping  of  a  few.  I  see  no  object  in  pre- 
serving the  mystery  any  longer.  In  the  summer  of  1912 
Mayhew  came  home  for  his  annual  leave  and  dining  with  us 
one  night  in  Princes  Gardens  he  mentioned  that  Budapest 
gossip  was  growing  excited  over  the  possibility  of  a  disturbance 
in  the  Balkans.  It  was  a  Bourse  rumour,  and  the  Czar  of 
Bulgaria  was  credited  with  having  operated  the  markets  in 
such  a  way  that  a  war  of  any  kind  would  leave  him  a  con- 
siderably richer  man.  I  asked  O'Rane  for  confirmation,  and 
he  informed  me  carelessly  that  some  of  his  diplomatic  friends 
were  expecting  trouble. 

A  few  weeks  later  Mayhew  invited  me  to  dine  and  bring 
O'Rane.  We  had  a  small  party  in  Princes  Gardens  that  night, 


306  SONIA 

so  I  told  him  to  join  us  and  sent  a  note  to  Raney's  flat. 
Mayhew  duly  arrived,  but  I  heard  nothing  from  O'Rane. 

"War's  quite  certain,"  I  was  told,  when  we  were  left  to 
ourselves.  "I'm  working  to  get  sent  out  as  correspondent 
for  the  'Wicked  World'  and  I  wondered  if  you  or  Raney 
would  care  to  come  too.  You'll  get  fine  copy  for  that  paper 
of  yours,  and  as  he  knows  that  part  of  the  world  and  speaks 
the  language " 

"It's  a  pity  he  couldn't  come  to-night,"  I  said.  "Frankly, 
Mayhew,  I  don't  see  myself  as  a  war  correspondent.  I  don't 
know  how  it's  done " 

"Everything  must  have  a  beginning,"  he  urged.  "I  don't 
either." 

"But  I've  not  got  the  physical  strength  to  go  campaigning. 
I  should  crack  up." 

"You'll  miss  a  lot  if  you  don't  come.  You  know,  a  series 
of  articles  for  'Peace'  on  the  'Horrors  of  Modern  War'  ..." 

It  was  at  that  point  that  my  uncle,  who  had  been  half- 
listening  to  our  conversation,  dropped  into  a  chair  by  May- 
hew's  side. 

"A  very  good  idea,"  he  observed.  "Don't  be  idle,  George. 
It'll  be  a  valuable  experience." 

Between  them  they  bore  down  my  opposition,  and,  while 
Mayhew  secured  my  passport  and  subjected  it  to  innumerable 
consular  visas,  Bertrand  ordered  my  kit  by  telephone  and 
reserved  me  the  unoccupied  half  of  a  compartment  on  the 
wagon-lits  as  far  as  the  Bulgarian  frontier. 

On  what  followed  I  prefer  not  to  dwell.  We  were  treated 
with  every  mark  of  courtesy  by  the  Bulgarian  General  Staff 
and — locked  in  an  hotel  in  Sofia  with  a  military  guard  at  the 
door  till  the  war  was  over.  Mayhew  is  ordinarily  a  charming 
companion,  as  were  no  doubt  the  two  or  three  dozen  other  war 
correspondents  who  shared  our  fate,  but  I  grew  to  loathe  his 
presence  almost  as  bitterly  as  he  came  to  loathe  mine.  I  am 
told  that  Sofia  is  an  interesting  city,  though  I  had  no  oppor- 
tunity of  examining  it ;  I  am  told,  too,  that  our  hotel  was  the 
best,  though  I  had  no  standard  of  comparison  whereby  to 
judge  it.  Happiness  came  to  me  for  the  first  time  when  I 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  307 

mounted  the  gangway  of  an  Austrian-Lloyd  boat  at  Salonica 
and  coasted  unhurriedly  round  Greece  and  Dalmatia  to  Trieste. 
Our  fellow-passengers  included  specimens  of  every  race  in 
the  Levant  and  one  or  two  outside  it.  The  first  night  on 
board  a  Greek  officer  wrapped  his  uniform  round  a  lump  of 
coal  and  dropped  it  over  the  side. 

"I  can't  stand  the  risk  of  being  recognized,"  he  told  me. 
"You  see,  we  were  all  forbidden  by  proclamation  to  depart 
from  strict  neutrality." 

"And  yet,  my  dear  Raney,"  I  said,  as  I  lit  a  cigar  and 
walked  arm  in  arm  with  him  along  the  deck,  "you  are  the 
man  who  chastises  us  for  our  want  of  discipline." 

"I  felt  I  owed  myself  a  smack  at  Turkey,"  he  answered, 
gazing  over  the  sapphire-blue  ^gean  to  the  vanishing  coast- 
line of  Greece.  "It  must  be  kept  quiet  or  you'll  get  me  into 
rather  serious  trouble." 

And  from  that  day  to  this  I  have  never  asked  or  answered 
where  O'Rane  went  when  he  left  London  in  the  late  summer  of 
1912  and  stayed  away  till  the  winter  of  the  following  year. 
It  is  now  too  late  to  harm  him  by  putting  the  facts  on  paper. 

Mayhew  left  us  at  Trieste  and  went  by  way  of  Vienna  to 
Budapest.  O'Rane  and  I  returned  to  England,  and  two  days 
after  our  arrival  in  town  I  invited  him  to  dine  with  me.  His 
man  told  me  by  telephone  that  he  had  sailed  that  morning 
for  Mexico,  and  I  gathered  was  trying  to  realize  his  property 
before  the  smouldering  disorder  there  burst  into  a  flame  of 
civil  war.  He  was  absent  from  England  all  the  summer  of 
1913,  and,  when  he  returned,  it  was  in  company  of  the  so-called 
James  Morris,  and  the  Mexican  oil  venture  was  at  an  end. 
I  never  learned  the  terms  on  which  they  had  sold  out,  but 
there  was  a  heavy  sacrifice.  O'Rane,  with  characteristic  op- 
timism, expressed  satisfaction  at  getting  anything  at  all  and 
sent  Morris  to  Galicia  and  northern  Italy  to  sink  his  experi- 
ence and  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  in  fresh  oil  speculations.  In 
the  late  autumn  they  set  up  a  joint  establishment  in  Gray's 
Inn,  selected,  after  due  deliberation,  as  the  place  where  an 
American  citizen  who  had  broken  off  diplomatic  relations  with 
his  family  was  least  likely  to  be  molested. 


308  SON1A 

After  the  weariness  of  my  imprisonment  in  Sofia  I  felt 
entitled  to  spend  the  summer  of  1913  in  seeking  relaxation. 
With  O'Rane  and  Loring  abroad  I  fell  back  for  companionship 
on  my  cousin,  Alan  Hunter-Oakleigh.  He  was  home  from 
India  on  leave,  and,  as  nothing  would  induce  him  to  bury  him- 
self in  Dublin,  the  family  came  over  and  took  a  flat  in  town 
— to  the  mortification  of  his  wild  young  brother  Greville, 
who  held  the  not  uncommon  view  that  a  man  should  not 
belong  to  the  same  club  as  his  father  or  inhabit  the  same 
capital  as  his  mother.  Violet  came  protesting,  as  the  con- 
ventional delights  of  the  Season  were  beginning  to  pall  on  her, 
and  the  only  member  of  the  family  who  extracted  profit  from 
the  change  of  home  was  the  youngest  brother,  Laurence,  who 
could  now  spend  his  Leave-out  days  from  Melton  in  an  orgy 
of  dissipation  for  which  one  or  other  of  his  relations  was 
privileged  to  pay. 

I  always  count  myself  an  Irishman  until  fate  flings  me  into 
the  arms  of  my  cousins.  Then  I  grow  conscious  of  respecta- 
bility, middle  age  and  the  solid  seriousness  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon.  A  day  with  one  of  them  was  an  adventure ;  a  night 
with  more  than  one  almost  invariably  a  catastrophe.  For 
the  early  weeks  of  the  season  I  shepherded  Alan  through  half 
a  hundred  crowded  and  entirely  blameless  British  drawing- 
rooms  ;  we  dined  in  all  the  approved  restaurants  and  saw  the 
same  revue  and  musical  comedy  under  a  score  of  different 
names.  Then  he  grew  restless. 

"This  is  too  much  like  Government  House,"  he  com- 
plained of  an  Ascot  Week  ball  at  Bodmin  Lodge  with  Royalty 
present.  "I  want  a  holiday  from  knee-breeches  and  twenty- 
one  gun  salutes.  Low  Life,  George!  Have  you  no  Low  Life 
to  show  me?" 

I  referred  the  question  to  Summertown,  who  was  wander- 
ing about  with  a  cigarette  drooping  from  his  lips  and  an 
anxious  eye  on  the  time. 

"Wait  just  ten  minutes,"  he  begged  us.  "Greville  and 
Fatty  Webster  have  gone  off  to  cut  the  electric-light  wires." 

"But  why?"  I  asked. 

"To  cheer  these  lads  up  a  bit,"  he  answered,  pointing  a 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  309 

disgusted  finger  at  the  stiff,  formal  ballroom. 

"Then  I  propose  to  leave  at  once,"  I  said,  making  for  the 
staircase. 

"Oh,  you'd  better  stay,"  he  called  after  me.  "Why,  for 
all  you  know,  you  may  get  your  pocket  picked  by  a  third- 
class  royalty.  Not  everyone  can  say  that,  you  know,  and  some 
of  to-night's  lot  look  proper  Welshers.  Just  as  you  like,  though, 
and,  if  you'd  really  rather  go,  I'll  give  you  a  scrambled  egg 
at  the  'Coq  d'Or.'  " 

My  cousin  brightened  visibly  at  the  suggestion,  and  the 
three  of  us  drove  to  a  silent,  ill-lit  street  off  Soho  Square. 
An  impressive  commissionaire  admitted  us  to  a  small  oak- 
panelled  hall  with  a  cloakroom  on  one  side  and  a  new  mahog- 
any counter  on  the  other.  A  Visitors'  Book  lay  open,  and 
Summertown  gravely  Inscribed  in  it  the  names  of  J.  Boswell, 
Auchinleck;  S.  Johnson,  Litchfield;  and  R.  B.  Sheridan, 
London.  We  descended  to  a  glaring  white  and  gold  room, 
as  new  as  everything  else,  with  tables  round  the  wall,  a  negro 
orchestra  at  one  end  and  in  the  middle  an  open  space  for 
dancing.  Replace  the  negroes  with  Hungarians,  and  the  room 
was  an  exact  replica  of  any  cabaret  in  Budapest  or  Vienna. 

As  cicerone,  Summertown  enjoyed  himself.  By  dint  of 
addressing  the  waiters  as  'Gerald,'  the  ladies  as  'Billy'  and 
demanding  'my  usual  table/  he  secured  us  kidney  omelettes, 
sweet  champagne  and  the  company  of  two  lightly  clad  and 
strangely  scented  young  women,  whose  serious  occupation  in 
life  was  twice  daily  to  shuffle  on  to  the  Round  House  stage 
by  way  of  a  platform  through  the  stalls,  to  the  refrain  of 
"Have  you  seen  my  rag-time  ra-ags?"  A  swarthy  Creole 
hovered  within  call  and  was  urged  to  complete  the  party. 

"Je  suis  femme  mariee,  m'sieur,"  she  sighed,  shaking  her 
head. 

"That's  all  right,  old  thing,"  Summertown  reassured  her. 
"We're  all  married — more  or  less — and  we're  only  young  once, 
Waitero !  Uno  chairo  immediate  damquick,  what  what !  Well, 
lads,  this  is  the  'Coq  d'Or.'  What  about  it?" 

"It  is  an  impressive  scene,"  I  replied. 

The  room  was  half  empty  when  we  arrived,  but  filled 


3io  SONIA 

rapidly  during  the  next  hour.  I  observed  Sir  Adolf  Erck- 
mann  presiding  over  a  large  party  and  saw  numerous  rather 
elderly  young  men  whose  lined  faces  and  watchful  eyes  were 
familiar  to  me  from  music-hall  promenades.  A  handful  o£ 
professionals  executed  the  Tango  and  Maxixe  with  much  of 
the  suggestiveness  of  which  those  dances  are  capable,  but  it 
was  only  when  the  twanging  banjos  changed  to  rag-time  that 
the  majority  of  our  neighbours  sheepishly  unbent  and  put  forth 
an  assumption  of  joic  de  vivre. 

"This  is  It,"  cried  Summertown,  jumping  up  excitedly 
with  arched  back  and  hunched  shoulders.  "Come  on,  Billy !" 

In  a  moment  they  were  locked  in  each  other's  arms, 
swaying  slowly  and  shuffling  down  the  length  of  the  blazing 
gold  and  white  room.  The  Creole  proposed  that  she  and  Alan 
should  follow  Summertown's  example,  and,  when  he  excused 
himself,  made  successful  overtures  to  the  other  Round  House 
lady  whom  we  had  been  privileged  to  entertain. 

"The  metropolis  is  waking  up,"  commented  Alan  as  he 
watched  the  scene. 

Elderly  women  were  being  navigated  by  anxious  young 
men,  elderly  men  pranced  conscientiously  with  shrill  young 
girls,  whom  they  seemed  to  envelop  in  waves  of  shirt  front 
and  human  flesh.  Three  rather  intoxicated  boys,  with  their 
hats  on,  gravely  linked  hands  and  circled  unsteadily  to  a 
hiccoughed  refrain  of  'Nuts  in  May' ;  girls  danced  with  girls, 
and  a  thin,  long-haired  man  performed  a  pas  seul  with  the  aid 
of  a  banjo  purloined  from  a  member  of  the  orchestra  who 
had  withdrawn  in  search  of  refreshment. 

"There's  been  rather  a  boom  in  night-clubs  lately,"  I  ex- 
plained. "People  were  tired  of  being  turned  out  of  the  res- 
taurants at  half -past  twelve." 

"Do  ladies  come  here  ?" 

"You  see  them,"  I  said. 

Alan  wrinkled  his  nose  and  turned  his  eyes  to  Sir  Adolf 
Erckmann,  who  was  dancing  with  a  girl  of  about  sixteen. 
Her  little  face  with  its  powdered  nose  and  painted  lips  was 
squeezed  against  his  chest,  one  great  arm  twined  round  her 
waist  and  gripped  her  body  to  his  own,  the  other  circled  her 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  311 

neck  and  rested  ponderously  on  her  left  shoulder.  Bald  and 
scarlet  from  collar  to  scalp,  Sir  Adolf  drooped  top-heavily 
over  her  head;  a  cigar  extended  jauntily  from  the  upper 
tangles  of  his  beard,  and  a  pair  of  rimless  eyeglasses  flapped 
at  the  end  of  their  cord  against  the  bare  back  of  his  partner. 

"And  who  is  our  friend  who  has  been  through  hell  with  his 
hat  off?"  Alan  inquired. 

I  told  him. 

"They  do  these  things  better  in  Port  Said,"  he  observed. 

Our  evening  was  not  hilariously  amusing,  and  I  am  afraid 
Summertown  n)ust  have  caught  us  yawning  and  consulting 
our  watches.  Certainly  he  was  as  prompt  with  apologies 
as  we  with  speeches  of  reassurance,  and  we  reached  Oxford 
Street  and  a  cab  rank  in  so  great  an  odour  of  amity  that  Alan 
and  I  found  ourselves  pledged  to  dine  with  him  and  be  intro- 
duced to  every  night-club  of  which  he  was  a  member. 

And  on  four  several  occasions  we  repeated  the  desolating 
experience.  By  the  end  of  a  month  I  could  pose  as  an  author- 
ity and  recognize  the  subtile  differences  that  distinguished 
one  from  another.  At  the  'Azalea,'  for  example,  the  hall  was 
oblong ;  at  the  'Long  Acre'  there  was  a  Hungarian  orchestra ; 
and  the  conventional  white  and  gold  of  the  others  gave  place 
to  white  and  green  at  the  'Blue  Moon.'  For  all  their  variety, 
however,  there  came  a  day  when  Alan  and  I  decided  that  we 
.  would  not  eat  another  kidney  omelette,  nor  drink  another 
glass  of  sweet  champagne,  nor  watch  the  gyrations  of  another 
free-list  chorus  girl. 

"But  you  simply  must  come  to  the  'Cordon  Bleu,' "  cried 
Summertown,  when  I  broke  the  news  as  we  dined  and  played 
shove-ha'penny  with  the  King's  Guard  in  St.  James's  Palace. 
In  his  eyes  we  figured  as  two  middle-aged  converts  who  were 
showing  a  disposition  to  recant.  "It's  the  cheeriest  spot  of 
all ;  you'll  have  no  end  of  a  time  there." 

"Why  didn't  you  take  us  there  before?"  I  asked,  with 
resentful  memory  of  my  late  endurance. 

"The  police  were  expected  to  raid  it,"  he  explained.  "It's 
all  right,  that's  blown  over.  I'll  take  you  on  Tuesday." 

Rather  than  wound   his   feelings,   we  passed  our  word. 


312  SON!  A 

The  'Cordon  Bleu'  was  the  epitome  of  all  the  others,  and  with 
Erckmann,  Lord  Pennington,  Mrs.  Welman  and  a  train  of 
little  pink  and  white  girls  in  short  tight  skirts,  seemed  to  be 
weighted  with  more  than  a  fair  share  of  Apaches.  Wearily 
we  seated  ourselves  at  one  of  the  little  tables  and  watched 
the  party  swelling.  It  was  eighteen  strong  when  we  entered, 
with  nine  men  who  made  a  business-like  supper  and  nine 
women  who  smoked  endless  cigarettes,  talked  in  penetrating 
tones  and  called  each  other  by  unflattering  nicknames.  As 
a  new  couple  came  in,  one  of  the  girls  jumped  up  to  make 
way  and  began  to  dance.  I  was  too  short-sighted  to  recognize 
her  at  first,  but,  as  she  came  nearer,  our  eyes  met  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  I  bowed.  Not  very  skilfully  she  pretended  not  to 
see  me,  but  by  ill-luck  the  music  stopped  a  few  minutes  later 
when  she  was  opposite  our  table. 

"Miss  Dainton  and  Fatty  Webster  of  all  people!"  cried 
Summertown. 

Sonia  turned  slowly  and  surveyed  the  group. 

"George !  And  Captain  Hunter-Oakleigh !"  she  exclaimed, 
with  a  fine  start  of  surprise.  "And  Lord  Summertown!  I 
say,  you  are  going  it!  I  thought  you  were  much  too  heavy 
for  a  night-club,  George !" 

"My  cousin  wanted  to  see  Low  Life,"  I  explained,  as  I 
brought  up  a  chair. 

"But  this  isn't  low !  All  the  best  people  come  here.  Has 
anybody  got  a  cig.  ?" 

Alan  offered  her  his  case,  and  she  leant  back  with  her 
hands  clasped  behind  her  head  and  her  eyes  half  closed,  in- 
haling the  smoke  and  languidly  blowing  it  out  through  her 
nose.  For  the  "Cordon  Bleu"  her  costume  was  admirably 
chosen — a  tight-fitting  dove-grey  skirt  slashed  open  to  the 
knee  on  one  side  and  revealing  transparent  stockings  and  satin 
shoes  laced  criss-cross  up  to  the  shin ;  the  waist  was  high,  and 
at  the  waist  the  dress  stopped  short,  leaving  arms  and  back 
bare  to  the  shoulder  blades ;  she  wore  no  gloves,  and  the  re- 
mains of  a  grey  net  scarf  protruded  from  her  partner's  tail- 
pocket.  Out  of  the  Russian  ballet  I  hardly  remember  seeing  a 
girl  more  sparingly  attired. 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  313 

Webster  was  in  his  customary  condition  of  silence  and 
sticky  heat.  I  sometimes  wonder  how  a  man  whose  utterance 
was  restricted  to  four  words  at  a  time  could  have  been  in- 
volved in  an  action  for  breach  of  promise,  yet  there  has  never 
been  any  doubt  that  he  paid  substantial  compensation.  Apo- 
plectically  he  grunted  "Thanks,"  when  Summertown  plied  him 
with  champagne,  and  sat  thoughtfully  drinking  until  Sonia  ex- 
pressed a  wish  to  go  on  dancing.  Without  having  spent  an 
unduly  vicious  youth  I  knew  by  a  certain  glaze  over  Webster's 
eyes  that  he  would  be  imprudent  to  undertake  such  violent 
exercise.  At  Sonia's  bidding,  however,  he  clutched  the  table 
and  rose  with  an  effort  to  his  feet.  Only  when  he  continued 
to  stand  there  rocking  gently  from  side  to  side  did  she  turn 
a  rather  scared  face  to  me  with  the  words : 

"Fatty's  tired.  Come  and  dance,  George.  It's  a  waltz; 
you  can  manage  that." 

Lest  a  worse  thing  befall  her,  I  threw  myself  into  the  breach 
and  waltzed  to  a  couple  of  unoccupied  chairs  at  the  far  end  of 
the  room. 

"Are  you  going  to  be  a  sport,  George?"  she  inquired  a 
little  uncertainly  as  we  sat  down. 

"What  exactly  does  that  mean  ?"  I  asked. 

She  looked  at  me  with  her  head  on  one  side. 

"I  shan't  be  popular  if  you  tell  mother  you've  seen  me 
here,"  she  explained. 

"But  you  said  all  the  best  people  came  here,"  I  reminded 
her.  "Where  are  you  supposed  to  be — officially  ?" 

"Surrey  House.  I'm  going  back  there  in  a  minute.  It  was 
frightfully  dull,  but  we  did  our  best  until  Mrs.  Wemley — it's 
her  ball,  you  know — had  the  cheek  to  come  up  and  say  she 
didn't  like  to  see  the  one-step  done.  That  put  the  lid  on! 
These  old  frumps  will  be  going  back  to  lanciers  and  barn- 
dances  next.  Fatty  and  I  wandered  out  to  smoke  a  cig.  when 
a  taxi  drifted  providentially  by  and  brought  us  here." 

I  got  up  and  looked  at  my  watch. 

"And  now  I'm  going  to  take  you  back  there,"  I  said. 

"I  must  wait  till  Fatty's  sobered  down  a  bit,"  she  an- 
swered, looking  across  the  room  at  her  somnolent  partner.  "If 


SONIA 

the  worst  comes  to  the  worst,  I  can  always  say  that  Sir  Adolf 
invited  me." 

"You're  coming  now,"  I  said.    "It's  the  price  of  my  silence." 

She  lay  comfortably  back  in  her  chair  with  her  legs 
crossed,  swinging  one  foot. 

"Rot !    You  wouldn't  be  such  a  sneak,"  she  began. 

"Now,  Sonia,"  I  repeated. 

She  looked  at  me,  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  walked  up 
the  stairs  in  silence.  I  scribbled  a  note  to  Alan,  put  her  in  a 
taxi,  and  drove  to  Surrey  House. 

"I  suppose  you're  not  in  a  mood  for  good  advice  ?"  I  asked, 
as  we  drove  along  Oxford  Street. 

"No-p,"  she  answered  shortly,  and  I  held  my  peace.  Curi- 
osity, however,  got  the  better  of  her,  and  she  inquired  whether 
I  imagined  she  was  not  capable  of  looking  after  herself. 

"I  was  wondering  whether  you  appreciated  what  kind  of 
woman  frequents  a  place  like  the  'Cordon  Bleu'?"  I  said. 

"My  dear  George,  I  wasn't  born  yesterday,"  she  answered. 

"But  if  you  dress  in  the  same  way,  go  to  the  same  places, 
sup  with  the  same  men " 

"The  difference  is  that  I  know  where  to  stop,  George." 

"That  knowledge  is  not  common  with  your  sex.  In  any 
case,  the  people  who  see  you  there " 

"Oh,  damn  public  opinion !"  she  interrupted  irritably. 
"People  who  know  me  know  I'm  all  right;  people  who  don't 
know  me  don't  matter.  And  that's  all." 

"And  here's  Surrey  House,"  I  said,  as  the  taxi  slowed 
down.  "I  haven't  been  invited,  so  I  won't  come  in.  If  I  were 
you,  I  should  avoid  men  who  don't  know  when  they've  drunk 
as  much  as  is  good  for  them." 

"Good  night,  grandpapa!"  she  answered,  as  she  ran  up 
the  steps  and  disappeared  inside  the  house. 

in 

The  autumn  and  winter  of  1913  I  divided  between  Ireland 
and  the  Riviera.  When  I  came  back  to  London  the  following 
spring,  Amy  Loring  told  me  that  her  her  brother  had  returned. 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  315 

Ostensibly  his  yacht  had  to  be  fitted  with  new  engines,  and 
while  in  England  he  was  taking  the  opportunity  of  attending 
to  a  little  business.  At  the  time  of  our  conversation  he  was 
at  House  of  Steynes,  and,  as  soon  as  the  tour  of  inspection  was 
over,  there  would  be  nothing  to  keep  him. 

"Do  see  if  you  can  knock  some  sense  into  him,"  Amy 
begged  me  despairingly.  "It's  perfectly  ridiculous  his  wan- 
dering about  all  over  the  world  like  this.  Mother  feels  it 
frightfully." 

"What  is  he  like  now  ?"  I  asked. 

She  brushed  back  the  curls  from  her  forehead  and  made 
a  gesture  of  impatience. 

"I  don't  know.  He's  horribly  ironical.  Nothing  in  life  is 
worth  doing,  according  to  him.  He  smiles  politely  and  sneers 
politely.  .  .  .  And  all  the  time,  you  know,  I'm  sure  he's  as 
lonely  and  melancholy  as  can  be.  That  engagement  was  an 
awful  business,  George.  He  was  very  much  in  love  with 
her " 

"And  she  treated  him  abominably,"  I  said,  lighting  a  cig- 
arette. 

"Yes,  I  think  she  did,"  Amy  answered  deliberately.  "It 
wasn't  his  fault.  Of  course,  it's  not  every  woman  who  could 
marry  him,  he's — difficile;  but  the  way  he  behaved  to  her 
was  perfectly  angelic.  Now  he's  lost  faith  in  everything.  .  .  . 
Do  see  if  you  can't  do  anything  for  him ;  he's  bored  to  the 
verge  of  distraction,  being  by  himself  all  this  time." 

I  promised  to  do  what  I  could,  and  on  the  night  of  his 
return  to  London  we  dined  together.  It  was  the  last  evening 
of  the  Melton  holidays,  and  I  had  organized  a  small  theatre 
party  for  my  cousin  Laurence, — Violet  and  Amy  were  with 
us, — and,  as  the  ordering  of  the  arrangements  was  in  Laur- 
ence's youthful  but  self-confident  hands,  we  sat  in  the  deafen- 
ing neighbourhood  of  a  powerful  coon  band  and  dined  incon- 
gruously off  unlimited  hors  d'oeuvres,  a  Nesselrode  ice-pudd- 
ing and — so  far  as  I  can  remember — nothing  else.  Still  at  his 
order  we  drank  sparkling  Burgundy,  variously  described  by 
him  as  a  'pretty  tipple'  and  by  Loring  as  'warm  knife- 
wash.'  We  spent  the  evening  in  a  theatre  where  we  were 


316  SONIA 

forbidden  to  smoke  and  supped  off  Strasbourg  pie  and  iced 
cider-cup  in  a  restaurant  where  two  persistent  dancers  whirled 
their  bewildering  way  in  and  out  of  the  tables. 

"A  pretty  useful  evening,"  said  my  cousin,  as  we  dispatched 
him  to  bed;  and  I  had  not  the  heart  to  undeceive  him. 

"Remember  me  to  Burgess,  Laurie,"  said  Loring,  and  turn- 
ing to  Violet,  "I  wonder  if  you  keep  a  little  brandy  in  this 
flat  ?  My  digestion  is  not  what  it  once  was." 

Life  is  a  tangle  of  incongruities,  and  at  one  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  in  a  St.  James's  Court  flat,  with  Mrs.  Hunter-Oak- 
leigh  sleeping  on  one  side  of  us  and  Laurence  on  another,  we 
formally  welcomed  Loring  back  to  London  over  a  supple- 
mentary meal  of  bread,  cheese  and  liqueur  brandy.  Warming 
to  the  work,  we  summoned  O'Rane  by  telephone  from  Gray's 
Inn.  It  was  half-past  three,  and  dawn  was  lighting  up  the 
sky,  when  Amy  broke  up  the  party  by  demanding  to  be  taken 
home  to  bed. 

"And  now  you're  back  in  England,  you're  going  to  stay 
here?"  Violet  inquired,  as  she  and  Loring  shook  hands. 

"I  can't  get  away  for  a  bit,"  was  the  answer.  "What  with 
this  engine " 

"Will  you  stay  long  enough  to  make  your  apologies  ?"  she 
asked,  looking  at  him  through  narrowed  lids. 

"But  what  have  I  done  ?"  he  inquired  anxiously. 

"A  halfpenny  postcard — any  time — just  to  show  you  were 
still  alive " 

"But  I  didn't  write  to  anyone "  he  protested. 

Violet  laughed  and  turned  to  the  door.  In  the  subdued 
yellow  light  her  grave  beauty  was  very  attractive.  Though  she 
smiled  still,  her  eyes  were  wistful,  and  I  chose  to  fancy  she 
had  not  outgrown  her  old  affection  so  quickly  as  Loring. 

"My  dear,  I'm  not  jealous!"  she  said.  "As  a  mark  of 
friendship,  though " 

"Violet,  I'm  frightfully  sorry!"  he  exclaimed,  taking  an 
eager  step  towards  her.  "Will  that  do  ?" 

"Are  you  going  off  again?" 

"I  shall  stay  as  long  as  there's  anything  to  stay  for." 

The  direct  and  obvious  route  from  St.  James's  Court  either 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  317 

to  Princes  Gardens  or  Gray's  Inn  is  perhaps  not  by  Curzon 
Street,  but  it  was  so  long  since  we  had  been  together  that 
O'Rane  and  I  sat  talking  in  the  library  of  Loring  House  until 
there  was  barely  time  for  a  Turkish  bath  before  breakfast. 
The  Yately  seat  was  vacant,  and  Raney  proposed  to  begin 
his  canvass  in  two  days'  time.  He  was  full  of  rhetoric  and 
indignation  on  the  condition  of  Ireland  and  rehearsed  his 
election  speeches  at  some  length. 

"It's  as  bad  as  you  like,"  Loring  interrupted,  "but  it  won't 
come  to  anything." 

"Are  you  in  the  Special  Reserve?"  O'Rane  asked  sud- 
denly. 

"I  believe  I've  got  an  honorary  rank  of  some  kind  as  a 
Lord  Lieutenant,"  answered  Loring,  "but  I'm  not  on  the  active 
list.  What's  the  Special  Reserve  been  doing?" 

"I  hear  they  received  secret  preparatory  mobilization 
orders  in  March,"  said  O'Rane.  "It's  not  supposed  to  be 
known,  but  one  of  the  military  attaches  told  me.  This  is 
April.  What's  it  all  about?" 

"The  Government  won't  mobilize  the  Regular  Army  for  a 
row  of  this  kind,"  said  Loring  contemptuously. 

"Well,  what  are  they  doing  it  for,  then?" 

But  O'Rane's  question  was  unanswered  for  another  four 
months. 

Loring  accompanied  me  to  the  Turkish  Baths,  and  we  lay 
on  adjoining  couches  sipping  coffee  and  lazily  discussing  what 
had  taken  place  during  his  absence  from  England.  If  ever  a 
man  was  bored  and  dissatisfied,  that  man  was  Loring.  A  cer- 
tain pride  kept  him  away  from  the  House  of  Lords,  he  had 
neither  the  age  nor  the  energy  to  qualify  him  for  a  Governor- 
ship and  was  yet  too  old  and  substantial  in  mind  to  be  amused 
by  a  purely  social  life. 

"Old  Burgess  was  right,  you  know,  George,"  he  yawned. 
"I've  had  a  damned  wasted  experience.  And  the  Lord  knows 
how  it  will  end.  What  is  there  to  do?" 

"I  should  spend  a  few  weeks  in  town,"  I  suggested.  "You've 
probably  had  enough  of  your  own  company." 

"God!     Yes!     Only  London,  you  know.  .  .  .  D'you  see 


3i8  SONIA 

much  of  the  Daintons?  You  can  speak  quite  freely.  After 
all  I  was  engaged  to  her  for  nearly  a  year,  and  it's  been  broken 
off  for  three." 

I  finished  my  coffee  rather  deliberately  and  lit  a  fresh 
cigarette. 

"She  has  not  improved,  Jim,"  I  said. 

He  lay  back  and  stared  at  the  ceiling. 

"I  used  to  think  .  .  .  You  know,  George,  I've  got  to  an 
age  when  I  ought  to  marry." 

"So  has  she,"  I  observed,  tucking  my  towels  round  me 
and  beginning  to  brush  my  hair.  "I'm  coming  round  to 
Bertrand's  view  that  an  unmarried  woman  of  five-and-twenty 
is  a  public  danger,  particularly  when  husband-hunting  is  con- 
ducted with  its  present  healthy  absence  of  restraint.  The 
spinster  is  not  so  much  an  object  of  pity  as  an  offence  against 
nature,  and  Nature  punishes  any  liberty  you  take  with  her.  In 
the  old  days  we  had  our  convents  where  superfluous  women 
could  retire  with  dignity.  That  at  least  whited  the  outside  of 
the  sepulchre.  The  present  London  Season  is  a  pathological 
study.  You'll  see  for  yourself." 

He  rose  slowly  from  the  bed  and  began  to  get  into  his 
clothes. 

"I  don't  think  I  shall  be  much  in  town  if  I'm  going  to 
run  into  the  Daintons  everywhere,"  he  answered. 

Only  three  days  later  I  was  able  to  tell  him  that  this  last 
danger  had  been  removed.  Bertrand  and  I  had  arranged  to 
hear  "Parsifal"  at  Covent  Garden,  and,  as  his  box  was  large, 
he  offered  a  seat  to  Violet — the  one  woman  of  his  family 
whom  he  treated  with  paternal  kindness.  There  was  still  room 
for  another,  and  I  invited  Loring  to  join  us.  Nothing  is  more 
repugnant  to  my  taste  than  to  interfere  with  the  destinies  of 
others,  but  when  Amy  petitioned  me  in  person  I  could  not 
decently  refuse. 

"He  can't  tell  one  note  from  another,"  I  expostulated,  "and 
the  thing  starts  at  five.  He'll  be  reduced  to  tears." 

"If  he  doesn't  want  to  come,  he  needn't  accept,"  she  an- 
swered. "All  I  ask  you  to  do  is  to  give  him  the  invitation." 

"Well,  will  you  invite  him — from  me  ?" 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  319 

"No,  I  want  you  to  send  him  a  note.  The  time,  and  where 
to  meet,  and  the  arrangements  for  dinner — and  who's  to  be 
there." 

Without  further  protest  I  sat  down  and  wrote  as  I  was  bid. 

"Tell  him  not  to  talk  through  the  Good  Friday  music,"  I 
begged. 

"I  shan't  tell  him  anything,"  said  Amy.  "I  don't  know  any- 
thing about  the  plan;  it's  just  a  thought  that's  casually  oc- 
curred to  you " 

"I  knew  I  should  have  the  blame  put  on  me,"  I  answered 
resignedly. 

When  the  night  arrived  there  was  little  blame  to  apportion, 
and  Loring  thanked  me  effusively  for  my  invitation.  Between 
the  acts  we  dined  at  the  Savoy  and  were  returning  to  our 
box  when  I  caught  sight  of  Sonia  waiting  for  her  party  in  the 
hall.  Fortunately  the  others  had  gone  on  ahead  before  our, 
eyes  met. 

"I  haven't  seen  you  for  an  age,"  she  began  pleasantly,  in 
apparent  forget  fulness  of  a  peevish  meeting  at  the  'Cordon 
Bleu'  the  previous  summer. 

"Are  you  up  for  the  season  ?"  I  asked. 

"No,  I'm  going  abroad  next  week.  Sir  Adolf's  getting  up  a 
motor  tour  through  France  and  Italy,  ending  up  at  Bayreuth 
in  time  for  the  Festival.  Lord  Pennington,  Mrs.  Welman,  Sir 
Adolf,  his  sister, — the  Baroness,  you  know, — Fatty  Webster 
and  me.  I'm  with  Fatty  to-night." 

"Are  your  people  in  town?"  I  asked,  as  I  prepared  to 
follow  my  party.  Webster  is  a  man  I  do  not  go  out  of  my  way 
to  meet. 

"Father  is,  but  mother's  tired  of  London,  so  I'm  staying 
with  Mrs.  Ilkley.  She's  a  model  chaperon  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing,  but  she  will  live  out  in  the  Cromwell  Road.  It's  a 
fearful  bore." 

"A  most  respectable  quarter,"  I  commented. 

"It's  a  rotten  hole  when  you've  got  an  hour  and  a  half  to 
dine  and  dress  and  get  back  here  in,"  she  grumbled.  "I  didn't 
try.  I  just  changed  in  Fatty's  flat ;  that's  why  he's  late.  The 
poor  soul's  only  got  one  bedroom,  so  I  monopolized  it  while  he 


320  SONIA 

was  gorging.  By  the  way,  that's  not  necessarily  for  publica- 
tion, as  they  say." 

"Why  on  earth  did  you  tell  me?"  I  asked,  with  the  mild 
exasperation  of  a  man  who  resents  youthful  attempts  to  shock 
his  sense  of  propriety. 

"I  thought  you  wanted  cheering  up,"  Sonia  answered  airily. 
"You're  so  mid- Victorian." 

"You're  getting  too  old  for  this  eternal  ingenue  business, 
Sonia,"  I  said.  "And  yet  not  old  enough  to  avoid  coming  a 
very  complete  cropper.  Don't  say  I  didn't  warn  you  ?" 

When  I  got  back  to  the  box  Loring  was  raking  the  stalls 
with  his  opera-glass.  As  Sonia  and  Webster  came  in,  he  gave 
a  slight  start  and  sat  far  back  in  his  chair.  No  one  else  noticed 
the  movement,  but  I  had  time  to  scribble,  "She  is  going  abroad 
immediately,"  on  my  programme  and  hand  it  to  him  before 
the  lights  were  lowered.  At  supper  he  announced  without 
preface  that  he  proposed  to  spend  at  least  part  of  the  Season  in 
London. 

With  the  detachment  of  one  who  has  never  taken  even 
social  dissipation  with  the  seriousness  it  deserves,  it  flatters  my 
sanity  to  describe  the  condition  of  England  in  these  years  as 
essentially  neurotic.  In  retrospect  I  see  stimulus  succeeding 
stimulus,  from  the  Coronation  year — when  all  expected  a  dull 
reaction  after  the  gaiety  of  King  Edward's  reign — to  1912, 
when  an  over-excited  world  feared  a  reaction  after  the 
Coronation  year.  This  dread  of  anti-climax  caused  the  carni- 
val of  1912  to  be  eclipsed  in  the  following  spring,  and,  when 
Loring  invited  me  to  assist  him  in  "one  last  fling  before  we  set- 
tle down,"  we  found  that  1914 — with  its  private  balls  and 
public  masquerades,  its  Tango  Teas  and  Soupers  Dansants,  its 
horseplay  and  occasional  tragedies — was  bidding  fair  to  beat 
the  records  of  its  predecessors. 

For  three  and  a  half  months  we  seemed  hardly  to  be  out 
of  our  dress-clothes.  Valentine  Arden,  as  usual,  let  his  flat 
and  took  a  suite  at  the  Ritz,  from  which  he  descended  nightly 
at  the  invitation  of  a  seemingly  inexhaustible  stream  of  people 
with  sufficient  money  to  spend  fifteen  hundred  pounds  on  a 
single  night's  entertainment.  Nightly  there  came  the  same 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  321 

horde  of  pleasure-seekers,  some  of  them  girls  I  had  been  meet- 
ing regularly  for  ten  years,  at  first  sight  no  nearer  to  any  settled 
purpose  in  life.  I  think  it  is  not  altogether  the  fancy  of  an 
ageing  and  jaundiced  eye  to  see  a  strain  of  vulgarity  spreading 
over  Society  at  this  time ;  for,  though  Erckmann  chanced  to  be 
abroad,  his  flashy  followers  had  established  their  footing  and 
remained  behind  to  prove  that  money  can  open  every  door. 
Lady  Isobel  Mayre,  daughter  of  the  Minister  of  Fine  Arts, 
gave  them  an  entree  to  Ministerial  society;  the  poverty  of 
Lord  Roehampton  enabled  them  to  add  a  Marquess's  scalp 
to  their  belt,  and  the  old  distinction  between  smartness  and 
respectability  broke  down.  The  prohibited  dances  and  fashions 
of  one  year  struggled  to  become  the  next  year's  vogue.  To  be 
inconspicuous  was  to  be  demode. 

"The  fact  is,  we're  too  old  to  stay  the  course,"  Loring  said, 
regretfully  at  supper  one  morning  towards  the  end  of  June. 
"George,  let  me  remind  you  that  you  and  I  are  as  near  thirty- 
five  as  makes  no  odds.  Amy,  you're  thirty.  Violet,  you're — 
well,  you  look  about  nineteen." 

"Add  ten  to  it,"  Violet  suggested. 

"We're  all  too  old ;  we  must  give  it  up.  You're  all  coming 
to  Hurlingham  with  me  next  week,  aren't  you?  And  then 
we'll  ring  down  the  curtain  and  say  good-bye  to  London." 

"One  must  live  somewhere,"  I  said,  with  an  uneasy  feeling 
that  his  new  way  of  life  might  involve  my  spending  the 
greater  part  of  the  year  in  County  Kerry. 

Loring  lit  a  cigarette  and  gazed  with  disfavour  round  the 
garish  room. 

"Either  I  shall  marry,"  he  said,  "or  else  go  and  live 
abroad." 

rv 

The  Hurlingham  Ball  at  the  beginning  of  July  1914  was 
the  last  of  its  kind  I  ever  attended — probably  the  last  I  shall 
ever  attend.  We  went  a  party  of  eight,  as  Loring  wanted  to 
offer  O'Rane  a  complimentary  dinner  after  his  election  at 
Yately,  and  Mayhew  conveniently  arrived  in  London  for  his 


322  SONIA' 

summer  leave  as  the  tickets  were  being  ordered.  To  an  out- 
sider we  must  have  presented  a  curious  study  in  contrasts. 
Amy  Loring  had  confided  to  me  her  certainty  that  her  brother 
would  propose  to  Violet  before  the  evening  was  out,  and  four 
of  us  were  therefore  in  a  state  of  watchful  anxiety.  Of  the 
other  four,  the  two  girls  spent  their  time  affecting  interest  in 
a  heated  political  discussion  in  which  O'Rane  and  Mayhew, 
with  a  fine  disregard  of  fitness,  were  volubly  engaged. 

"Well,  I'll  tell  you  something  you  don't  know,"  said  May- 
hew,  when  we  were  by  ourselves  at  the  end  of  dinner  and  the 
last  of  a  dozen  preposterous  stories  had  been  exploded  by 
O'Rane.  "The  Archduke  Franz  Ferdinand  has  gone  with  his 
wife  for  a  tour  through  Bosnia " 

"Even  I  knew  that,"  I  said,  as  I  cut  my  cigar. 

"Don't  interrupt,"  Mayhew  urged.  "I'll  lay  anybody  a  hun- 
dred to  one  they  don't  come  back  alive." 

There  was  a  suitably  dramatic  pause  as  he  sat  back  with 
hand  extended  waiting  for  his  wager  to  be  taken. 

"He's  the  heir,  isn't  he?"  Loring  inquired.  "Is  this  some 
beastly  new  riddle  ?" 

"It's  the  solution  of  a  very  old  one,"  said  O'Rane  gravely. 
"The  Archduke  married  a  morganatic  wife  who'll  be  Queen 
of  Hungary  and  can't  be  Empress  of  Austria.  It'll  save  a  lot 
of  complication  if  they're  put  out  of  the  way.  After  all,  it's 
only  two  human  lives." 

"But — is  this  known  ?"  I  asked  Mayhew  in  astonishment. 

"It's  being  openly  discussed  in  Budapest " 

"And  London,"  O'Rane  put  in. 

"Confound  you,  Raney,"  Mayhew  cried.  "You  hear  every- 
thing." 

"It's  a  pretty  story,  even  if  it  isn't  quite  new,"  said 
O'Rane.  "I  shan't  take  your  bet,  though,  Mayhew ;  you're  too 
likely  to  win.  You  see,"  he  went  on,  turning  to  us,  "the 
Bosnians  simply  hate  the  Archduke,  so  it'll  look  quite  plausible 
if  anyone  says  they've  blown  him  up  on  their  own  initiative. 
And  then  Austria  will  have  a  wolf-and-lamb  excuse  for  saying 
Servia  was  responsible  and  annexing  her,  just  as  she  did  with 
Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  six  years  ago.  This  is  the  way 


THE  YEARS  OF  CARNIVAL  323 

Powers  and  Potentates  go  to  work  in  our  enlightened  twentieth 
century." 

The  discussion  was  interrupted  by  a  footman  entering  to 
say  that  the  cars  were  at  the  door.  It  was  still  daylight  when 
we  began  to  motor  down,  but  we  arrived  to  find  the  gardens 
lit  with  tiny  avenues  of  fairy  lights  and  to  be  greeted  with 
music  borne  distantly  on  the  warm,  flower-laden  breeze.  For 
an  hour  I  danced  or  wandered  under  the  trees  watching  the 
whirl  of  bright  dresses  through  the  open  ballroom  windows. 
Loring  and  Violet  had  disappeared  from  view  and  only  re- 
turned to  us  at  supper-time  so  exaggeratedly  calm  and  self- 
possessed  that  Amy  squeezed  my  arm  warningly  as  we  entered 
the  Club  House. 

"George,  I've  come  to  the  conclusion  that  we  must  have  one 
more  ball  before  we  settle  down,"  he  said,  as  we  drew  our 
chairs  in  to  the  table. 

"This  is  about  the  last  of  the  season,"  I  warned  him. 

He  waved  away  the  objection. 

"I'll  give  one  myself — just  to  a  few  friends  and  neigh- 
bours at  Chepstow — some  time  about  the  end  of  the  month 
before  everybody's  scattered.  I'm  giving  it  in  Violet's  honour." 

We  turned  to  look  at  her,  and  the  self-possession  gradually 
faded  out  of  her  face. 

"Violet,  is  it  true?"  Amy  asked,  jumping  up  in  her  ex- 
citement. 

She  nodded,  with  very  bright  eyes. 

"I  will  not  have  a  scene !"  Loring  exclaimed.  "Amy,  sit 
down!  If  you  try  to  kiss  me  in  public.  .  .  .  Now,  do  try  to 
look  at  the  thing  reasonably.  It  might  have  happened  to 
anyone ;  it  has,  in  fact,  happened  to  a  number  of  people.  As  for 
speeches  and  glass-waving.  .  .  .  Look  how  well  George  takes 
it !  No  nonsense  about  being  glad  to  have  me  as  a  cousin,  no 
grousing  because  he'll  have  to  be  best  man — oh,  we've  arranged 
all  that,  my  son — he  just  sits  and  drains  a  second  bumper  of 
champagne  before  anyone  else  has  finished  his  first.  .  .  .  Amy, 
I  shan't  speak  about  it  again !" 

"My  dear,  I'm  so  happy,"  said  his  sister,  subsiding  with 
moist  eyes  into  her  chair. 


324  SONIA 

"We're  tolerably  satisfied  ourselves,"  Loring  admitted. 
"Aren't  we,  Violet?" 

But  Violet  made  no  reply  beyond  a  quick  nod  of  the  head 
that  was  not  yet  quick  enough  to  hide  the  trembling  of  her 
lips. 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE  FIVE  DAYS 


"Now,  this  had  proved  the  dry-rot  of  the  race 
He  ruled  o'er,  that,  i'  the  old  day,  when  was  need 
They  fought  for  their  own  liberty  and  life, 
Well  did  they  fight,  none  better:  whence,  such  love 
Of  fighting  somehow  still  for  fighting's  sake 
Against  no  matter  whose  the  liberty 
And  life,  so  long  as  self-conceit  should  crow 
And  clap  the  wing,  while  justice  sheathed  her  claw, — 
That  what  had  been  the  glory  of  the  world 
When  thereby  came  the  world's  good,  grew  its  plague 
Now  that  the  champion-armour,  donned  to  dare 
The  dragon  once,  was  clattered  up  and  down 
Highway  and  by-path  of  the  world  at  peace 
Merely  to  mask  marauding,  or  for  sake 
O'  the  shine  and  rattle  that  apprized  the  fields 
Hohenstiel-Schwangau  was  a  fighter  yet.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Then  must  the  world  give  us  leave 
To  strike  right,  left,  and  exercise  our  arm 
Torpid  of  late  through  overmuch  repose, 
And  show  its  strength  is  still  superlative 
At  somebody's  expense  in  life  or  limb:  .   .   . 
Such  devil's  doctrine  so  was  judged  God's  law  ..." 
"Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau,  Saviour  of  Society.' 

ROBERT  BROWNING. 
325 


326  SONIA 


THE  first  five-and-thirty  years  of  my  life  were  singularly 
unemotional.  My  father  died  when  I  was  too  young 
to  appreciate  the  loss,  and  I  had  never  seen  death  at 
close  quarters  nor  known  the  breathless  thrill  of  a  great 
triumph  or  the  bitterness  of  a  great  disappointment.  There 
was  nothing  to  change  the  tolerant  scale  of  values,  to  bring 
about  an  intenser  way  of  life  or  a  harsher  manner  of  speech. 
My  world  was  comfortably  free  from  extremes,  and  it  hardly 
occurred  to  me  that  the  architects  of  civilization  would  attack 
their  own  handiwork,  or  that  a  man's  smooth,  hairless  fingers 
would  ever  revert  to  the  likeness  of  a  gorilla's  paw. 

The  "Five  Days"  changed  all  that.  On  the  thirty-first 
of  July  I  left  London  for  Chepstow  with  no  greater  troubles 
than  a  sense  of  uneasiness  at  the  breakdown  of  the  Bucking- 
ham Palace  Conference  on  the  Irish  deadlock.  My  uncle 
Bertrand,  a  pedantic  Constitutionalist,  drove  me  to  Padding- 
ton,  and  from  his  speech  I  could  see  he  was  undecided  whether 
to  lament  the  failure  of  the  negotiations  or  rejoice  that  a  con- 
stitutional innovation  had  proved  ineffective.  With  many 
others  he  felt  the  situation  in  Ireland  must  be  very  grave  to 
allow  of  the  Sovereign  summoning  the  party  leaders  to  his 
Palace ;  equally,  so  drastic  a  course  could  in  the  eyes  of  ordi- 
nary men  only  be  justified  by  success. 

And  it  had  failed.  And  the  next  news  might  well  be  that 
shots  were  being  exchanged  on  the  borders  of  Ulster. 

Such  a  possibility  brought  little  embarrassment  to  the  holi- 
day makers  who  thronged  the  station.  Fighting  my  way 
through  the  Bank-holiday  crowd,  I  found  the  nucleus  of  our 
party  sitting  patiently  on  suitcases  and  awaiting  a  train  that 
was  indefinitely  delayed  by  the  extra  traffic  and  a  minor 
strike  of  dining-car  attendants.  As  the  time  went  by  and 
the  crowd  increased,  Summertown,  Mayhew  and  O'Rane  built 
the  luggage  into  a  circle  and  sat  contentedly  talking,  while  I, 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  327 

who  was  responsible  to  Loring  for  the  full  complement,  wan- 
dered about,  list  in  hand,  ticking  off  the  names  of  the  new 
arrivals. 

"Adsum!"  called  out  Mayhew,  when  I  reached  him. 
"Aren't  you  glad  you  didn't  take  my  bet  about  the  Archduke, 
George?" 

"I  nearly  did,"  I  said.  "I  thought  we'd  left  that  sort  of 
thing  behind  with  the  Borgias." 

"It  was  a  wonderful  opportunity,"  he  observed,  with  the  air 
of  a  connoisseur  in  political  crime.  "You've  seen  the  Aus- 
trian ultimatum?  Well,  Servia's  going  to  be  mopped  up  like 
Bosnia  and  Herzegovina." 

He  nodded  omnisciently  and  raised  his  eyebrows  interroga- 
tively at  O'Rane,  who  was  seated  on  the  next  suitcase  with  his 
chin  on  his  hands,  lost  in  thought. 

"They  told  me  at  the  Club  that  Russia  was  mobilizing,"  I 
said. 

"She'll  climb  down  all  right,"  Mayhew  assured  me.  "You 
remember  the  'Shining  Armour'  speech?  It's  no  joke 
taking  on  Austria  and  Germany,  especially  if  you  can't  mobilize 
tinder  about  two  months.  It  might  be  different  if  France 
came  in,  but  she's  unprepared.  They've  been  having  quite  a 
pretty  dust-up  in  the  Senate  the  last  few  days  over  army 
equipment." 

Summertown  scrambled  down  from  his  suit-case  and  strut- 
ted importantly  across  to  us. 

"I  don't  mind  telling  you  fellows  there's  been  a  run  on  the 
Bank  to-day,"  he  said.  "I  don't  know  what  a  run  on  the  Bank 
is,  but  there's  been  one.  So  now  you  know." 

"There'll  be  a  run  on  a  number  of  banks  if  Austria  declares 
war,"  Mayhew  predicted.  "And  such  a  financial  smash  as 
the  world  has  never  seen.  Our  system  of  credit,  you  know. 
...  I  put  it  to  a  big  banker  last  night,  and  he  said,  'My  dear 
Mayhew,  I  entirely  agree  with  you '  " 

"All  big  bankers  talk  to  Mayhew  like  that,"  Summertown 
interrupted. 

Mayhew  sighed  resignedly. 

"Thank  the  Lord,  here's  the  train,"  he  said.    "I'm  wasted 


328  SONIA 

on  Guardee  subalterns.  Come  the  useful  with  the  luggage, 
Raney." 

O'Rane  had  not  spoken  a  word  since  we  shook  hands  an 
hour  before ;  the  sound  of  his  name  roused  him,  however,  and 
he  jumped  up  with  the  words : 

"If  you're  thanking  the  Lord  about  anything,  you  might 
thank  Him  that  we're  an  island." 

"Have  you  got  anything  up  your  sleeve,  Raney?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  a  number  of  things.  For  one,  the  Fleet  sailed  from 
Portsmouth  two  days  ago  with  coal  piled  up  like  haystacks  on 
deck." 

"What  the  deuce  for?"  I  asked. 

"Fresh  air  and  exercise,  I  suppose,"  he  answered.  "If 
you  want  to  try  your  hand  again  at  war  correspondence,  I 
make  no  doubt  you'll  have  the  chance." 

"This  is  devilish  serious,"  I  said.  Experience  had  taught 
me  that  news  from  O'Rane  was  not  to  be  lightly  set  aside. 

"As  serious  as  you  like,"  he  agreed.  "Don't  pull  too  long 
a  face,  though,  or  you'll  spoil  Jim's  party." 

And  with  that  word  his  manner  changed.  Loring  Castle 
lies  between  Chepstow  and  Tintern  on  a  high  ridge  of  hills 
overlooking  the  Severn.  In  normal  times  I  have  lunched  in 
town,  taken  tea  on  the  train  and  reached  my  destination  after 
a  run  of  four  or  five  hours.  On  this  occasion  the  strike  and 
holiday  traffic  caused  us  to  stop  at  countless  wayside  stations ; 
it  was  after  eight  when  we  reached  Chepstow,  but,  thanks  to 
O'Rane,  the  journey  was  the  most  hilarious  I  have  ever  under- 
taken. Panic  and  disorder  indeed  descended  upon  us  when  at 
last  the  train  steamed  in  and  our  two  reserved  coaches  yielded 
up  their  sixteen  men,  twelve  girls  and  nine  maids ;  to  this 
day  I  cannot  explain  how  I  fitted  the  party  and  its  luggage 
into  the  different  cars  and  delivered  all  at  the  Castle  without 
loss  or  mishap,  but,  when  Loring  entered  my  room  as  I  was 
dressing,  he  informed  me  that  not  so  much  as  a  jewel-case  had 
gone  astray. 

"Any  news  in  town?"  he  asked,  and  I  gave  him  the  gossip 
of  Mayhew  and  O'Rane.  "I  meant  about  Ireland,"  he  went 
on.  "This  Austrian  business  won't  come  to  anything,  but 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  329 

there's  trouble  brewing  in  your  sweet  island.  We're  all  rather 
depressed  down  here." 

O'Rane,  who  had  scrambled  along  the  balcony,  appeared 
at  the  open  window  in  time  to  catch  the  last  words. 

"The  only  man  who  has  the  right  to  be  depressed,"  he  said, 
"is  the  luckless  devil  who's  put  his  money  into  Austrian  oil." 

Loring  turned  to  him  swiftly. 

"Are  you  hit,  Raney?" 

"Well,  of  course,  as  a  Member  I  get  four  hundred  a  year 
less  income-tax,"  he  answered  cheerfully. 

"Talk  seriously,  you  idiot." 

O'Rane  tossed  a  silver-topped  bottle  into  the  air  and  caught 
it  again. 

"I  can't  take  myself  seriously  just  now,  Jim,"  he  said. 
"We  haven't  earned  a  penny  since  Austria  mobilized  and  our 
men  were  called  up " 

"You  save  your  wage-bill,"  I  put  in. 

"We've  got  contracts,  old  man,  and  we've  got  penalties. 
Morris  spent  his  morning  raising  every  last  penny  he  could 
lay  hands  on;  we've  been  buying  in  the  open  market  with 
the  price  soaring  against  us — and  we  shall  just  be  able  to 
supply  the  Ubique  Motor  and  Cab  Company  to  the  end  of 
our  term.  We  were  rather  pleased  to  get  that  contract,  too," 
he  added,  with  a  laugh.  "As  for  the  others " 

"What  others?" 

"Half  a  dozen  more.  Just  enough  to  break  us  very  com- 
fortably." 

"Rot,  Raney!" 

"So  be  it!  We've  sold  the  spare  furniture  in  Gray's 
Inn, — Morris  has  developed  wonderfully  the  last  few  years — 
and,  unless  Austria  demobilizes  within  a  week,  I  don't  see  us 
paying  twenty  shillings  in  the  pound.  Still,  he's  thirty  and 
I'm  only  thirty-one  ..." 

He  strolled  to  the  door,  but  Loring  caught  one  shoulder 
and  I  the  other. 

"Look  here,  Raney "  we  began  together. 

"Dear  souls!  save  your  breath!"  he  laughed.  "I  wasn't 
touting.  I've  been  in  warmer  corners  than  this  in  my  mis- 


330  SONIA 

spent  youth,  and  while  I'm  frightfully  grateful "  He 

paused  and  dropped  his  voice  as  though  he  were  talking  to 
himself:  "Why,  my  God!  if  I  can't  keep  afloat  at  one-and- 
thirty  with  all  my  faculties  .  .  .  Hi,  let  me  go!  There's 
Amy,  and  I  want  to  tell  her  how  ripping  she  looks !" 

He  strained  forward,  but  we  kept  our  grip  on  his  arms. 

"Little  man!"  said  Loring.  "D'you  remember  the  first 
time  I  thrashed  you  at  Melton?" 

"You  brute,  you  nearly  cut  me  in  two !" 

"I  was  rather  uncomfortable  about  it,"  Loring  admitted. 
"I  wasn't  sure  that  you  were  accountable  for  your  actions. 
Now  I  know  you're  not." 

With  a  sudden  jerk  he  broke  away  and  bounded  to  the 
hall,  three  stairs  at  a  time,  for  all  the  world  like  a  child  at 
its  first  party. 

Half-way  through  dinner  Amy  turned  to  me  in  perplexity, 
holding  in  her  hand  a  worn  gold  watch  with  a  half -obliterated 
L.  K.  worked  into  an  intricate  monogram. 

"Is  David  quite  mad?"  she  inquired.  "I've  been  given 
this  to  keep  until  he  asks  for  it  back." 

"It  belonged  to  Kossuth,"  I  explained.  "He  gave  it  to 
Raney's  father,  and  I  fancy  Raney  values  it  rather  more  than 
his  own  soul." 

"But  why ?"  she  began. 

"He's  afraid  of  losing  it,  I  suppose." 

"But  if  he's  kept  it  all  these  years " 

"You'll  be  doing  him  a  favour,  Amy,"  I  said,  and  without 
another  word  she  slipped  the  watch  into  her  waistband.  It 
was  true  that  the  watch  and  its  owner  had  faced  some  severe 
trials  in  different  continents,  but  O'Rane  had  never  up  to  that 
time  undergone  the  humiliation  of  bankruptcy  proceedings 
with  the  last  indignity  of  being  compelled  to  empty  his  pockets 
in  court. 

When  dinner  was  over  Loring  gave  him  the  alternative  of 
sitting  still  or  being  turned  out  of  the  dining-room.  I  have 
never  seen  a  man  so  indecently  elated  by  the  consciousness 
of  his  insolvency.  The  port  had  hardly  begun  to  circulate 
before  he  jumped  up  and  ran  to  the  window  in  hopes  that  the 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  331 

guests  were  arriving  and  while  we  smoked  and  talked  he  was 
shifting  restlessly  from  chair  to  chair,  inquiring  the  time  at 
two-minute  intervals. 

"But  for  your  strictly  sober  habits "  I  began. 

"There's  lightning  in  the  air!"  he  exclaimed,  his  black 
eyes  shining  with  excitement.  "All  these  ye^rs  I've  been 
waiting — I  never  forget,  George — waiting  ...  I  won't  be 
smashed!  By  God,  I  won't  be  smashed!" 

"I'm  glad  I'm  not  one  of  your  creditors,"  I  said. 

"Bah!  They're  all  right.  It's  my  beloved  Austrians.  I 
don't  trust  you  a  yard,  old  man,  but  unless  I  tell  somebody 
I  shall  burst.  If  Austria  makes  war,  she'll  find  a  Foreign 
Legion  fighting  with  the  Servians ;  I've  fixed  the  preliminaries, 
and  a  wire  from  town  ...  Ye  gods!  why  don't  they  start 
the  music?  I  want  to  dance  with  Violet,  and  the  next  time 
we  meet  I  may  not  have  any  legs!"  A  chord  several  times 
repeated  sounded  from  a  distant  piano — violins,  followed  by 
the  deep  note  of  a  'cello,  began  to  tune  up  and  along  the 
drive  below  our  open  windows  came  the  beat  of  throbbing 
engines,  a  sudden  scrunch  of  tyres  slowing  down  on  gravel, 
a  slamming  of  doors  and  a  hum  of  voices.  "At  last!"  cried 
O'Rane,  springing  to  the  door  and  running  headlong  into  the 
ballroom. 

We  threw  away  our  cigars,  drew  on  our  gloves  and  walked 
into  the  hall.  Lady  Loring  and  Amy  stood  at  the  stairhead 
and  were  joined  a  moment  later  by  Violet  and  Jim,  who  took 
up  their  position  a  pace  behind  to  one  side.  It  was  a  small 
party,  but  for  twenty  minutes  a  procession  of  slight  girls 
and  smooth-haired,  clean-shaven  men  ascended  the  stairs — 
curiously  and  characteristically  English  from  the  easy  move- 
ments of  the  girls  and  the  whiteness  of  their  slender  shoulders 
to  the  sit  of  the  men's  coats  and  the  trained  condition  of  their 
bodies.  Good  living,  hard  exercise  and  fresh  air  seemed 
written  on  every  face;  there  was  a  wonderful  cleanliness  of 
outline  and  clarity  of  eye  and  skin ;  the  last  ounce  of  flabbi- 
ness  had  been  worked  away.  And,  like  any  consciously  self- 
isolated  section  of  society,  they  were  magnificently  at  ease 
and  unembarrassed  with  one  another ;  sixty  per  cent,  were  re- 


332  SONIA 

lated  in  some  degree,  and  all  appeared  to  answer  to  dimin- 
utives or  nicknames. 

"There's  nothing  to  touch  them  in  any  country  /  know," 
murmured  Mayhew,  unconsciously  giving  expression  to  my 
thoughts.  "Shall  we  go  up?" 

"In  a  moment,"  I  said. 

For  a  while  longer  I  watched  them  arriving,  the  girls 
pattering  up  the  steps  with  their  skirts  held  high  over  thin 
ankles  and  small  feet ;  their  eyes  showed  suddenly  dark  and, 
mysterious  in  the  soft  light  of  the  great  electric  lamps,  and 
eternal  youth  seemed  written  in  their  pliant,  immature  lines 
and  lithe  movements.  Outside,  the  sky  was  like  a  tent  of 
blue  velvet  spangled  with  diamonds.  The  Severn  far  down 
the  valley  side  swirled  and  eddied  in  its  race  to  open  sea,  and 
the  moon  reflected  in  the  jostling  waters  shivered  and  forked 
like  silver  lightning.  A  scent  of  summer  flowers  still  warm 
with  the  afternoon  sun  and  gemmed  with  falling  dew  rose 
like  a  mist  and  enfolded  the  crumbling  yellow  stone  and 
blazing  windows  behind  me. 

When  the  last  car  had  panted  away  into  the  night,  I  heard 
a  light  step  on  the  flagstones  of  the  terrace,  and  Amy  Loring 
slipped  her  arm  through  mine;  the  far-off  hum  of  voices 
for  a  moment  was  still,  and  there  followed  an  instant  of  such 
silence  as  I  have  only  known  in  the  African  desert. 

"There  is  an  Angel  of  Peace,"  she  whispered,  "breathing 
his  blessing  over  the  house." 

Then  the  band  broke  into  the  opening  bars  of  a  waltz. 

We  walked  back  and  found  Violet  and  Loring  at  the  door 
of  the  hall,  standing  arm  in  arm  and  gazing  silently,  as  I 
had  done,  on  the  tumbling  waters  of  the  Severn.  We  smiled, 
and  on  a  common  impulse  he  and  I  shook  hands.  Violet 
nodded  as  though  she  understood  something  that  neither  of 
us  had  put  into  words,  and  as  we  entered  the  hall  Amy  turned 
aside  to  kiss  her  brother's  cheek. 

"They're  very  happy,"  said  Lady  Loring  when  I  met  her 
at  the  stairhead. 

"You  mean  Jim  and  Violet?" 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  333 

"Everybody,  bless  them!"  she  answered,  pointing  with 
her  fan  through  the  door  of  the  ballroom. 

In  an  alcove  looking  on  to  the  terrace  Valentine  Arden 
was  smoking  a  cigarette  and  idly  watching  the  pageant.  There 
was  a  ghostly,  'end-of-season'  look  about  his  white  face  and 
the  dark  rings  round  his  eyes. 

"One  was  wondering  if  you  brought  any  news  from 
town?"  he  drawled.  "You  came  to-day?" 

"I  suppose  so,"  I  said.  It  seemed  more  than  eight  hours 
since  we  held  our  council  of  war  on  the  rampart  of  suitcases. 

"One  assumes  there  will  be  no  actual  fighting,"  he  went 
on. 

"I  shouldn't  assume  anything,"  I  said. 

A  shadow  of  annoyance  settled  on  his  weary  young  face. 

"One  intended  bringing  out  another  book  this  autumn," 
he  observed. 

"Oh,  that'll  be  all  right,"  I  said.  'We  shan't  be  dragged 
in." 

I  danced  till  supper-time  and  met  him  again  by  appoint- 
ment for  a  small  cigar  on  the  terrace.  We  had  been  seated 
there  for  some  ten  minutes  when  a  white  touring  car,  driven 
by  an  elderly  man  in  a  frieze  overcoat  and  soft  hat,  drew  up 
opposite  our  chairs.  As  he  came  into  the  triangle  of  light 
by  the  open  doors  I  recognized  him  as  Colonel  Farwell,  the 
younger  brother  of  Lord  Marlyn  and  a  frequent  guest  of  my 
uncle  in  Princes  Gardens. 

"I  wonder  whether  you  gentlemen  can  tell  me  where  Lord 
Loring's  to  be  found?"  he  began.  "Hallo,  Oakleigh!  I 
didn't  see  it  was  you.  This  is  providential.  You  needn't 
bother  Loring,  but  I  should  be  greatly  obliged  if  you  could 
lay  hands  on  my  young  nephew." 

"I'll  find  him  for  you,"  I  said.  "I  hope  there's  nothing 
wrong." 

"There's  no  fresh  news,  if  that's  what  you  mean,  but 
things  are  looking  pretty  serious.  I  hear  that  Germany  has 
declared  herself  in  a  state  of  war." 

"The  Fleet's  been  ordered  to  take  up  war  stations,"  I 
told  him. 


334  SONIA 

"You've  heard  that  too?  Well,  the  Army  will  be  the 
next  thing,  and  I  should  rather  like  to  get  Jack  back  to 
London.  I  can't  come  in  with  these  clothes,  but  if  you'd 

take  him  a  message Don't  make  a  fuss  to  frighten  the 

women,  of  course." 

I  found  Summertown  finishing  a  bachelor  supper  with 
Charles  Framlingham  of  the  Rifle  Brigade.  Farwell's  mes- 
sage seemed  equally  applicable  to  both  and  was  received  by 
both  with  equal  disfavour. 

"To  declare  war  in  the  middle  of  supper  is  not  the  act 
of  a  gentleman,"  Framlingham  pronounced. 

He  came  out  on  to  the  terrace,  notwithstanding,  while  I 
ran  upstairs  to  warn  Loring  what  was  afoot.  When  we  re- 
turned, it  was  to  find  six  dutiful  but  protesting  young  officers 
pulling  coats  and  rugs  over  their  evening  dress  and  struggling 
for  corner  seats  in  the  car. 

"I'm  dreadfully  sorry  to  break  up  your  party,  Loring," 
Farwell  called  out  as  they  glided  away  amidst  a  subdued 
chorus  of  apologies  and  adieux. 

Loring  turned  to  me  interrogatively. 

"The  Duchess  of  Richmond's  Waterloo  Ball,"  I  remarked. 

"We  must  keep  things  going  upstairs,"  he  said,  turning 
back  into  the  house.  "On  my  soul,  I  can't  see  what  it's  all 
about.  What's  it  got  to  do  with  us?  If  Servia  and  Austria 
want  to  fight,  and  we  aren't  strong  enough  to  stop  them, 
why!  good  heavens!  let's  keep  out  of  it  like  gentlemen! 
Why  the  deuce  are  we  being  so  officious  with  our  Fleet?" 

It  was  one  o'clock  when  we  re-entered  the  ballroom,  and 
so  successfully  did  we  keep  things  going  that  we  supped  for 
the  last  time  in  broad  daylight,  and  our  guests  left  at  five. 

O'Rane  insisted  on  a  march-past  in  honour  of  Loring  and 
Violet,  and  we  ran  down  a  line  of  sixteen  cars  with  a  tray 
of  glasses  and  five  bottles  of  champagne.  As  each  car  passed 
the  door,  there  was  a  burst  of  cheering  and  the  glasses  flashed 
to  the  toast ;  from  Loring  on  the  top  step,  standing  arm  in 
arm  with  Violet,  came  an  acknowledging  cheer,  and  the  cars 
swept  forward  to  the  turn  of  the  drive,  where  O'Rane  and  I 
were  posted.  A  shower  of  champagne  glasses  poured  from 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  335 

the  windows,  to  describe  a  dazzling  arc  in  the  morning  sun- 
light and  fall  with  greater  or  less  precision  into  our  hands  or 
on  to  the  flower-beds  behind  us.  Above  the  cheering  and  the 
throb  of  the  engines  came  the  sound  of  a  piano  and  Valentine 
Arden's  voice: 

"Dixie!  all  abo-o-oard  forr  Dixie, 
Dixie!  Tak  you-rr  tickuts  heere  forr  Dixie!"   .  .  . 

II 

I  went  to  bed  at  six  with  the  syncopated  rhythm  of  the 
song  jerking  and  jigging  along  every  nerve  of  body  and  head. 

When  I  awoke  at  noon  on  the  Saturday,  the  papers 
were  brought  me  with  my  tea,  and  I  struggled  sleepily  to  read 
reason  into  the  day's  record  of  diplomatic  wrangling.  Emi- 
nently moderate  proposals  were  met  by  statements  of  irreduci- 
ble minima,  and  in  the  ensuing  deadlock  our  ambassadors 
surged  forward  like  a  Greek  Chorus  with  ineffectual  pleas 
for  patience  and  the  avoidance  of  irretrievable  steps.  Any 
cynic  among  the  combatants  must  have  laughed  himself  feeble 
at  our  resourceful  accommodations  and  fertile  readjustments. 
There  was  no  power  we  were  not  prepared  to  placate,  no 
ruffled  plumage  we  did  not  hold  ourselves  competent  to 
smooth.  And  so  far  as  I  could  then  see,  it  was  an  affair  of 
ruffled  plumage,  no  more  and  no  less. 

A  tired  restlessness  settled  on  our  shrunken  numbers  at 
luncheon,  and  in  the  afternoon  I  asked  Bertrand  by  wire  to 
take  pity  on  a  man  five  miles  from  a  station  and  to  send  me 
news  as  it  was  made  public.  We  were  sitting  at  tea  under 
the  elm  trees  at  the  back  of  the  house  when  a  footman  ap- 
peared with  a  salver  in  his  hand.  O'Rane  leapt  to  his  feet — 
and  subsided  with  a  mutter  of  disappointment  when  the  tele- 
gram was  brought  to  me. 

"Read  it  aloud!"  they  all  cried,  as  I  tore  open  the  en- 
velope. 

"  'Germany  reported  to  have  declared  war  on  Russia,' " 
I  said  and  saw  Violet  cover  her  face  with  her  hands. 

Mayhew  put  down  his  cup  and  lit  a  cigarette. 


336  SONIA 

"I  was  wrong  yesterday,"  he  admitted.  "I  thought  Rus- 
sia'd  climb  down.  Jim,  I  must  ask  you  to  excuse  me.  I  shall 
have  to  get  back  to  Budapest." 

O'Rane  walked  to  my  chair  and  took  the  telegram  from 
my  hands. 

"Germany  —  reported  • —  to  —  have  —  declared  —  war  — 
on — Russia,"  he  repeated.  "Germany  the  aggressor,  in  other 
words.  That  means  France  will  come  in." 

Amy  jumped  to  her  feet  and  then  sat  down  again. 

"I— I  don't  understand  it!"  she  exclaimed.  "It's  all  so 
inconceivably  wicked.  Just  because  a  wretched  little  country 
like  Servia  ..." 

She  broke  off  and  sat  interlacing  her  fingers  and  frowning 
perplexedly. 

"Don't  be  too  hard  on  Servia,  Lady  Amy,"  Mayhew  said 
and  told  her  his  version  of  the  Serajevo  murders. 

"And  don't  be  too  hard  on  even  Austria,"  added  O'Rane 
softly  when  the  story  was  done.  "I'm  none  so  sure  it  was 
Austria  that  baited  the  trap.  When  you  see  how  keen  Ger- 
many is  to  keep  the  quarrel  fanned " 

"And  bring  France  in  at  one  door  and  Russia  at  the 
other?"  Loring  interrupted  sceptically.  "The  one  combina- 
tion Bismarck  schemed  to  avoid?" 

"Bismarck's  dead,"  O'Rane  flung  back.  "And  Russia 
won't  be  mobilized  for  weeks.  If  once  they  break  through, 
the  Germans  can  march  to  Paris  and  back  again  while  she's 
getting  ready.  It's  a  gamble,  but  she  had  to  gamble  sooner 
or  later.  No  country  on  earth  could  stand  her  rate  of  prep- 
arations. //  they  can  break  through  .  .  .  Where's  a  map, 
Jim?  I  want  to  see  the  length  of  line  from  Belgium  to 
Switzerland.  Of  course,  if  the  French  can  hold  them  for 
a  month " 

"France  hasn't  declared  war  yet,"  I  called  out  as  they 
hurried  away.  Neither  checked  his  pace  at  my  words.  Heaven 
knows!  I  paid  little  enough  attention  to  them  myself.  At 
best  It  was  an  exercise  in  whistling  to  keep  up  courage. 

When  they  had  gone,  Mayhew  slipped  quietly  away,  and 
in  half  an  hour  a  car  was  at  the  door,  and  we  went  round  to 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  337 

the  front  of  the  house  to  bid  him  good-bye.  Lady  Loring, 
who  had  spent  the  afternoon  in  her  room,  came  down  for  a 
moment,  and  I  saw  that  her  eyes  were  red  and  her  placid, 
pretty  face  haggard  with  distress. 

"Why  must  it  be,  George?"  she  whispered,  pointing  over 
the  valley  to  the  blue  haze  of  the  Gloucestershire  hills.  "It's 
all  so  peaceful  here.  .  .  .  And  there  must  be  thousands  of 
places  like  this  all  over  Europe — with  men  coming  home 
through  the  fields  in  the  cool  of  evening.  .  .  .  Why  must  they 
start  blowing  each  other  to  pieces  when  none  of  them  knows 
what  it's  all  about?  Who  can  be  wicked  enough  to  take 
the  responsibility?" 

"We  appear  to  have  done  our  best  to  stop  it,"  I  said. 
"It  seems  as  though  there's  something  of  the  mad  dog  in 
every  man." 

Lady  Loring  smiled  wistfully. 

"Not  in  my  husband,  George.  Were  you  too  young  to 
remember  him?  It's  not  quite  fifteen  years  since  he  was 
killed,  and  I  often  wonder  what  good  his  death  did.  What 
would  have  happened  if  there'd  been  no  South  African  War?" 

"A  great  many  fine  lives  would  have  been  spared,"  I  said. 
"And  what  good  will  it  do  to  slaughter  the  manhood  of  Rus- 
sia, France,  Germany  .  .  .  ?  It's  the  size  of  the  modern  army 
that  appals  me,  Lady  Loring." 

"Thank  God  we  aren't  called  on  to  swell  the  slaughter," 
she  replied. 

By  Sunday  morning  our  further  reduced  party  was  in 
the  profoundest  depression.  While  Violet  and  the  Lorings 
were  at  Mass,  I  motored  to  Chepstow  with  O'Rane  and  Val 
Arden  in  search  of  papers.  We  returned  with  moist,  ill- 
printed  sensational  weeklies  that  the  others  had  never  before 
seen  and  with  heads  pressed  close  together  we  studied  the 
sinister  type,  repeating  the  headlines  under  our  breath  and 
gradually  chanting  them  in  a  falling  dirge.  Bertrand's  ten- 
tative announcement  was  confirmed,  and  on  the  assumption 
that  France  would  come  to  the  assistance  of  her  ally,  German 
troops  were  massing  in  stupendous  numbers  on  the  Rhine 
frontier. 


338  SONIA 

"Some  of  them  actually  on  French  soil!"  Loring  ex- 
claimed and  read  on.  "Pouring  into  Luxembourg  .  .  .  Isn't 
Luxembourg  a  neutral,  Raney?" 

"A  la  guerre  comnte  a  la  guerre,"  murmured  O'Rane. 
"So's  Belgium,  if  you  come  to  that;  but  they're  asking  leave 
to  march  through  and,  if  leave's  refused,  they'll  dam'  well  take 
it."  He  dropped  the  paper  and  walked  up  and  down  the  room 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  "The  war'll  be  over  in  a  fort- 
night if  they  advance  simultaneously  from  north  and  east; 
it'll  be  another  Sedan.  We  can't  allow  that." 

"For  God's  sake  don't  drag  us  in !"  Loring  exclaimed. 

O'Rane  faced  him  with  amazement  in  his  black  eyes. 

"But  we  can't  see  the  whole  of  northern  France  in  German 
hands,  plus,  say,  a  five  hundred  million  indemnity  for  the 
trouble.  How  long  d'you  suppose  it  would  be  before  our 
turn  came  ?  You  can  build  the  hell  of  a  lot  of  ships  with  five 
hundred  millions." 

Loring  was  silent.  We  were  all  silent  as  the  new  possi- 
bilities floated  gigantically  within  our  vision.  Eight-and- 
forty  hours  before  we  had  discussed  a  pair  of  political  assas- 
sinations in  an  outlying  province  of  the  Austrian  Empire ; 
we  were  now  to  consider  the  prospect  of  Europe's  greatest 
military  power  establishing  naval  bases  from  Cherbourg  to 
Dunkirk.  So  a  man,  straying  too  near  an  unfenced  engine, 
might  watch  in  fascination  as  wheel  bit  into  wheel  and  the 
cogs  engaged  inexorably  for  his  destruction. 

"And  Mayhew  told  us  Russia  wasn't  ready,"  murmured 
O'Rane. 

"Oh,  well,"  I  said,  "I've  spent  six  years  telling  people 
that  democracy  wouldn't  fight  democracy." 

"If  once  we  have  to  start  eating  our  words "  Loring 

began,  and  ended  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders. 

I  never  recall  a  longer  morning.  We  sat  in  the  garden 
after  breakfast,  reviving  the  memories  of  the  dance  and 
making  plans  for  Violet  and  Jim ;  without  warning  our  fever- 
ish voices  would  stammer  and  stop,  as  with  the  gag  of  un- 
skilled players  while  the  stage  waits.  After  a  moment's  rest- 
less silence  we  would  break  into  pairs  in  answer  to  a  common 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  339 

tacit  summons,  and  Amy  and  I  rounding  the  corner  of  the 
terrace  would  meet  Jim  and  Violet,  long-faced  and  distraught. 

"You  know  this  is  simply  appalling !"  one  of  us  would  say. 
We  had  all  said  it  by  luncheon-time. 

The  afternoon  brought  variety  and  a  deputation  of  three 
from  the  Neutrality  League — the  shortest  lived  and  not  least 
pathetic  body  with  which  I  have  been  associated.  It  was 
introduced  by  Dillworth,  the  red-bearded,  uncompromising 
Socialist  at  whom  I  had  gazed  more  in  pity  than  anger  during 
my  first-  session — Rayston,  the  Quaker  chemical  manufac- 
turer, spoke  second,  and  the  third  of  the  party  was  Braddell, 
who  rose  from  journalistic  obscurity  by  demonstrating  the 
economic  impossibility  of  war.  They  had  coopted  a  con- 
siderable committee  of  recalcitrant  Radicals,  pacificist  divines, 
two  professors  from  provincial  universities  and  the  usual  un- 
classified residue  that  is  flattered  to  be  asked  for  its  signature 
to  a  memorial.  Their  journey  from  London  by  a  stopping 
train  was  to  be  explained  by  my  association  with  "Peace"  and 
by  the  perfidy  of  my  uncle,  who  saw  them  from  his  dining- 
room  window  and  locked  himself  in  his  room  with  an  internal 
chill.  The  chill,  he  gave  them  to  understand  from  the  lips  of 
Filson,  the  butler,  would  outlast  them,  but  they  were  always 
at  liberty  to  interview  me  if  they  cared  to  visit  Loring  Castle, 
Chepstow. 

A  difficult  meeting  was  not  made  the  easier  by  the  fact 
that  I  entertained  a  certain  admiration  for  Dillworth.  He 
was  transparently  honest,  and  we  had  on  more  than  one  oc- 
casion worked  amicably  in  the  interests  of  "Peace."  I  had 
no  idea  what  line  Bertrand  proposed  to  take  with  our  paper 
but,  presuming  that  he  left  me  a  free  hand,  I  spoke  my 
thoughts  as  they  were  beginning  to  crystallize — and  proved 
guilty  of  that  inconsistency  which  is  the  unforgivable  sin  in 
the  eyes  of  such  doctrinaries  as  made  up  my  deputation. 

Their  speeches  invited  my  collaboration  in  a  manifesto 
declaring  our  detachment  from  the  European  quarrel.  We 
were  to  silence  the  increasingly  aggressive  tone  of  our  diplo- 
matic correspondence,  to  warn  the  Government  of  France 
that  it  must  look  for  no  assistance  in  a  wholly  unnecessary 


340  SONIA 

war,  to  detach  Russia  and  eventually  leave  Servia  to  pay  the 
penalty  of  her  crimes. 

"Her  crimes?"  I  echoed,  for  my  mind  was  full  of  May- 
hew's  grim  story  of  the  murders. 

"Surely,"  answered  Dillworth.  "I'm  a  Socialist,  Mr. 
Oakleigh,  and  I'm  a  Republican,  but  I  flatter  myself  I've  got 
some  little  imagination.  If  you'd  seen  years  of  sedition  in 
Afghanistan,  if  you  were  told  that  Afghans  had  murdered 
the  Prince  of  Wales  as  he  toured  the  North-West  Frontier 
Provinces — it's  no  good  shaking  your  head,  sir — you'd  call 
for  securities  no  whit  less  sweeping  than  those  that  Austria 
is  demanding.  I've  attacked  Russia  more  than  once  for 
tyranny,  but  I  never  thought  I  should  attack  her  for  sup- 
porting political  assassination." 

I  tried  to  waive  causes  and  concentrate  his  mind  on 
results. 

"Will  you  acquiesce  in  the  German  occupation  of  Paris 
and  Cherbourg?"  I  asked. 

Rayston  plunged  his  hand  into  the  capacious  pocket  of 
his  overcoat,  produced  a  sheaf  of  cuttings  and  read  me  ex- 
tracts from  my  own  articles  on  Germany  as  a  land  of  peace 
and  potential  friendliness. 

"Is  that  true  or  is  it  not  ?"  he  demanded, 

"I  believed  it  true  when  I  wrote  it,"  I  said. 

"Has  the  whole  nation  changed  in  a  week  ?"  he  demanded, 
flinging  out  his  arms. 

"I've  changed  my  opinion  of  the  nation." 

"In  seven  days — after  holding  it  as  many  years?  It 
doesn't  take  much  to  shake  your  faith." 

"It  takes  a  good  deal,"  I  answered.  "Unfortunately  a 
good  deal  was  forthcoming.  In  respect  of  your  manifesto, 
I  don't  want  war ;  I  hate  the  idea  of  it ;  we  must  do  all  in 
our  power  to  keep  out  of  it.  But  I  don't  know  the  limits  of 
our  power  or  the  obligations  of  the  Entente.  If  our  hands 
were  free,  I'm  disposed  to  let  France  fight  her  own  battles; 
if  we're  bound  by  treaty,  there's  no  more  to  be  said.  Of 
course,  if  the  Germans  try  to  get  through  Switzerland  or 
Belgium,  that  introduces  a  new  factor,  and  we  look  onlv  at 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  *  341 

the  question  of  policy.  I  submit  that  it  is  not  good  policy 
to  have  another  Sedan,  and  I  think  manifestos  and  counter- 
manifestos  may  well  be  postponed  till  the  Government  has 
given  a  lead." 

Dillworth  picked  up  his  hat  and  buttoned  his  coat  de- 
liberately. 

"We  counted  on  you,  Mr.  Oakleigh,"  he  said. 

"I  am  sorry  to  disappoint  you,"  I  said. 

That  night  we  tried  to  keep  away  from  the  state  of  Eu- 
rope, but  all  paths  in  conversation  led  back  to  the  same  point. 
The  international  position  of  Luxembourg  carried  us  to  the 
library:  histories  called  for  atlases,  the  armies  at  Sedan 
sent  us  to  the  "Statesman's  Year  Book,"  and  we  ended  with 
strategic  railways,  the  population  of  Russia  and  our  Ex- 
peditionary Force. 

"I  wonder  what  these  devils  in  Ireland  are  going  to  do?" 
Loring  demanded  suddenly. 

"And  in  India?"  O'Rane  added. 

On  Monday  the  German  declaration  of  war  on  Russia 
was  confirmed  in  the  papers,  and  we  read  that  the  uncon- 
ditional neutrality  of  Belgium  was  under  discussion  and  that 
the  Foreign  Secretary  would  speak  in  the  House  on  the  Bank 
Holiday  afternoon.  The  momentary  stimulus  of  news  died 
away  like  the  ebbing  strength  of  a  cocaine  injection.  We 
revived  on  learning  that  the  German  Embassy  in  London 
was  endeavouring  to  localize  the  conflict,  but  in  the  quick 
reaction  I  went  to  Loring  and  told  him  I  could  no  longer 
bear  to  be  away  from  London. 

"Stick  it  out  till  to-morrow,"  he  implored  me.  "We'll 
all  go  up  together." 

"Then  for  God's  sake  let's  do  something!"  I  cried  im- 
patiently. "Have  a  car  out.  ...  Go  somewhere.  .  .  .  You 
know,  our  nerves  are  going  to  pieces." 

We  drove  out  through  Tintern  to  Monmouth  and  returned 
by  way  of  Raglan,  Usk  and  Newport.  It  was  a  run  of  sixty 
or  seventy  miles  through  varying  scenery,  yet  every  town 
and  village  presented  the  same ' appearance  of  suspended  ani- 
mation. The  holiday-makers  stood  about  in  irresolute  knots 


342  SONIA 

or  walked  up  and  down  the  desolate  streets;  carriages  half 
filled  with  women  in  white  dresses  halted  at  the  corners  of 
the  roads,  while  the  men  grouped  themselves  round  the  driver 
and  argued  fretfully  where  to  go  and  whether  it  was  worth 
going  anywhere  at  all.  I  thought  suddenly  of  the  first  time 
I  saw  Pompeii :  I  had  always  wondered  how  the  inhabitants 
looked  when  the  first  hot  rain  of  ashes  began  to  fall. 

As  we  entered  Chepstow  on  our  way  home,  Loring  halted 
the  car  and  went  in  search  of  news.  Exploiting  the  free- 
masonry of  the  Press,  I  scribbled  my  Bouverie  Street  address 
on  a  card  and  won  admittance  to  the  offices  of  the  "Chep- 
stow Argus."  The  Foreign  Secretary  was  delivering  his 
pronouncement,  and  the  speech  was  being  circulated  in 
sections  over  the  wires.  We  walked  through  a  warehouse 
filled  with  clamorous,  quarrelling  newsboys,  up  a  rickety 
staircase  and  into  the  composing-room,  where  we  read  the 
introductory  passages  in  manuscript  over  the  compositors' 
shoulders.  Then  we  returned  to  the  Editor's  room  and  were 
handed  sheet  after  sheet  as  it  was  taken  off  the  private  wire. 
There  was  one  with  a  blue-pencilled  line  in  the  margin,  and 
I  read  the  passage  aloud : 

"  'For  many  years  we  have  had  a  long-standing  friendship 
with  France  .  .  .  how  far  that  friendship  entails  ...  an 
obligation,  let  every  man  look  into  his  own  heart,  and  his 
own  feelings,  and  construe  the  extent  of  the  obligation  for 
himself.' " 

"Have  we  or  have  we  not  pledged  ourselves  to  help 
France  if  she's  attacked?"  Loring  demanded  in  perplexity. 

"We  have,"  I  said. 

"Then  why  doesn't  he  say  so?" 

"It's  left  as  a  point  of  honour,"  I  suggested.  "That 
rules  out  discussion  how  the  Government  made  virtual 
promises  and  never  took  the  country  into  its  confidence. 
We  needn't  keep  the  others  waiting  any  longer.  Our  po- 
sition's defined,  and  Germany  goes  forward  at  her  own  risk." 

We  hurried  out  of  the  office  and  carried  our  news  to  the 
car  at  the  street  corner. 

"And  what  now?"  asked  Arden. 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  343 

"Now  nothing  but  the  end  of  the  world  will  keep  us  out 
of  war,"  Loring  returned. 

As  we  drove  away,  a  woman's  voice — I  could  not  dis- 
tinguish whose  it  was — murmured: 

"My  God!    Oh,  my  God!  ..." 


in 


"I'm  afraid  you've  all  had  a  sickening  time,"  said  Loring 
apologetically  after  dinner  that  night,  when  he  had  suggested 
the  break-up  of  the  party  next  day.  Lady  Loring  had  not 
left  her  room,  and  Amy's  parting  instructions  to  us  were  not 
to  hurry  over  our  cigars  as  she  and  Violet  were  going  to  bed. 

"Let's  hope  it'll  all  be  over  when  next  we  meet  here," 
said  Arden  conventionally. 

"If  we  ever  do,"  Loring  murmured,  half  to  himself,  as 
he  lit  a  cigar. 

"Hang  it  all,  we  aren't  at  war  yet,"  I  said. 

Loring   shrugged   his   shoulders. 

"Does  it  affect  my  point?"  he  asked.  "If  we  fight,  there'll 
be  a  bill  of  hundreds,  thousands  of  millions ;  and  if  we  keep 
out  of  it,  we  shall  spend  not  much  less  preparing  for  our  turn. 
I  seem  to  see  a  quadrupled  Navy  and  universal  service  and  a 
general  arming  to  the  teeth ;  and  that  means  an  end  of  your 
big  houses  and  cars  and  men-servants.  A  good  thing  too,  eh, 
Raney?" 

"A  very  good  thing."  It  was  Val  Arden  who  spoke. 
"You  can  afford  it,  Jim,  but  I  can't;  and,  honestly,  if  war 
comes  and  we're  brought  face  to  face  with  reality,  if  we  can 
give  up  pretending  .  .  .  God  knows,  there's  nothing  beautiful 
in  war,  and  in  my  way  I've  tried  to  find  beauty ;  the  destruc- 
tiveness  of  war  to  a  man  who  tries  to  create,  even  on  the 
smallest  scale  ...  I  don't  say  I  haven't  had  a  good  time; 
up  to  a  point  I've  succeeded.  .  .  .  That's  to  say,  for  a  man 
who  was  never  at  a  public  school  or  university,  and  lived  on 


344  SONIA 

four  hundred  and  fifty  a  year  paid  him  by  Arden,  Lawrence 
&  Younger,  Wholesale  Bootmakers,  Northampton,  I've  been 
taken  pretty  well  at  my  own  valuation — by  being  rather  more 
precious  than  the  most  precious  people  I  met  anywhere  in 
society " 

"You're  in  a  chastened  mood  to-night,  Val,"  commented 
Loring.  There  was  something  rather  embarrassing  in  this 
sudden,  uninvited  avowal  from  the  enigmatic  Arden. 

"Aren't  we  all?"  he  asked. 

"It  comes  a  bit  unexpectedly  from  you." 

Arden  drew  meditatively  at  his  cigar. 

"I'm  tired  of  it  all,  Jim,"  he  said,  with  a  weary  sigh. 
"The  whole  damned  hothouse  existence.  On  my  honour,  I 
almost  wish  I  were  a  soldier  so  that  I  could  feel  I  had  done 
man's  work  for  one  day  of  my  life.  ...  It  takes  a  time  like 
this  to  show  you  how  useless  and  untrained  our  class  is."  He 
broke  off  to  laugh  at  himself.  "Our  class,  indeed!  Raney, 
you  know  everything;  is  it  possible  for  a  man  like  me  to  get 
into  the  Army  nowadays?" 

"Before  a  year's  out,  there'll  be  hardly  a  hale  man  not  in 
the  Army,"  O'Rane  answered. 

"A  year?"  I  echoed. 

He  turned  to  me  quietly. 

"Don't  imagine  this  is  going  to  be  another  seven  weeks' 
war,"  he  said.  "It's  two  empires,  two  civilizations,  two 
ideals  in  conflict.  There'll  be  no  truce  till  one  or  other  has 
been  annihilated.  I've  lived  in  Germany  and  I  know  some- 
thing of  the  German  ideal;  I've  lived  here  and  watched  the 
life  that  we  all  love — and  revile ;  and  I  see  the  form  of  future 
civilization  balancing  midway  between  the  two  as  it  balanced 
before  between  Greek  and  Persian  or  Roman  and  Goth. 
Whatever  any  one  of  us  values  most  in  life  he'll  have  to  risk 
— and  it's  long  odds,  very  long  odds,  he  will  lose  it." 

Loring  studied  his  face  attentively  and  then  strolled  to 
the  window,  where  he  pulled  aside  the  curtains  and  gazed 
out  into  the  night.  He  looked  tired  and  worried,  and,  when  he 
turned  again  to  the  room,  it  was  with  the  suggestion  that  we 
should  go  to  bed. 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  345 

"If  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst,  I  suppose  we  can  only 
die  once,  Raney,"  he  said,  putting  his  hand  on  the  other's 
shoulder. 

"I  shan't  be  killed,"  answered  O'Rane.  "I've  got  too 
much  to  do  first." 

He  bent  foward  and  began  blowing  out  the  candles  on 
the  table  until  only  two  remained  alight,  while  the  rest  of  us 
watched  him  as  though  he  were  performing  a  rite.  "If  I'd 
been  meant  to  be  killed  it  would  have  happened  long  ago. 
The  fact  that  I'm  still  alive  .  .  .  You  fellows  think  it's 
superstition,  but  it  serves  my  purpose,  and  we  needn't  quarrel 
over  terms.  .  .  .  Good  night,  Jim ;  good  night,  Val.  .  .  . 
George,  I  shall  take  you  for  a  breath  of  fresh  air  in  the  garden 
before  we  turn  in." 

It  was  eleven  o'clock  when  we  stepped  on  to  the  terrace, 
one  before  we  came  in  to  bed,  and  for  the  first  hour  and 
three-quarters  we  walked  arm  in  arm  without  exchanging  a 
dozen  sentences.  His  phrase,  'the  life  we  all  love  and  revile,' 
and  the  sudden  sobering  of  Arden,  had  set  me  thinking  of  my 
own  life,  and  as  a  thing  for  which  a  man  might  die,  it  seemed 
a  mean  and  paltry  ideal.  At  Melton  and  Oxford  there  had 
been  at  least  generous  illusions,  but  my  dreams  had  left  me 
in  London.  The  pettiness  and  personal  ambitions  of  the 
House,  the  artificiality  and  extravagance  of  society,  the  life- 
lessness,  the  want  of  purpose,  the  absence  of  enthusiasm, 
seemed  to  argue  a  dying  civilization. 

I  thought  of  Loring  and  his  dozen  wasted  years,  but  he 
at  least  was  marrying  and  in  the  upbringing  of  a  family 
could  look  to  find  an  object  and  an  interest.  If  the  war- 
cloud  passed,  I  should  presumably  drift  on  as  I  had  done  be- 
fore, dancing  a  little  less,  shooting  a  little  more  as  the  years 
went  by,  and  gossiping  in  Fleet  Street  to  give  me  an  excuse 
for  gossiping  at  the  Club.  Had  I  died  that  night,  my  record 
for  a  man  of  education  would  not  have  been  a  proud  one. 
My  social  groove,  as  I  hinted  to  O'Rane  years  before  at 
Lake  House,  held  me  fast. 

"I'm  depressed,  Raney,"  I  said.  "Our  civilization  as  I 
see  it  would  never  be  missed.  In  place  of  religion  we  have 


346  SONIA 

controversies  over  ritual  or  endowments  or  the  Kikuyu  de- 
cision ;  for  art  we  have  cubism,  for  music  a  revue,  for  liter- 
ature a  sex  novel.  Sport  and  spending  money  and  being 
invited  to  the  right  houses  are  the  only  things  we  care  about." 

We  walked  on  in  silence  for  a  few  moments;  then  he 
said: 

"Think  again,  old  man." 

"I've  thought,  Raney.  Politics,  society,  journalism " 

The  thought  of  Erckmann  and  the  'Ruban  Bleu,'  the  memory 
of  Sir  John  Woburn  and  the  Press  Combine,  choked  me. 

"There's  a  world  outside  London,  old  man,"  he  said. 
"It's  a  large  thing  you're  condemning — the  order  of  an  empire 
where  there's  more  personal  liberty,  freedom  of  speech  and 
thought  and  even-handed  justice  than  anywhere  in  creation. 
A  race  of  degenerates  seldom  rules  for  long,  and,  if  it's  the 
virtues  of  individuality  that  make  our  rule  possible,  you 
must  expect  the  vices  of  individuality  to  appear  and  drop 
their  pebbles  into  the  wheels  of  the  machine. 

Again  we  walked  on  until  the  stable  clock  struck  one. 
O'Rane  looked  at  his  watch  in  surprise. 

"I'd  had  no  idea  it  was  so  late,"  he  said.  "I've  been  think- 
ing— like  you." 

"Or  Jim,  or  Val  Arden,"  I  put  in. 

"Yes,  and — like  you — I'm  depressed.  Things  move  so 
slowly,  George.  I've  been  so  busy  with  my  own  affairs  that 
I've  hardly  been  near  the  House  since  I  was  elected,  and  now 
there's  likely  to  be  war,  and  when  that's  over  I  shall  have 
to  start  again  at  the  bottom.  And  there  was  a  lot  I  was  in  a 
hurry  to  do,"  he  added  regretfully. 

"What  can  you  do  with  our  social  and  political  machine?" 
I  demanded. 

"It's  made  up  of  human  parts,"  he  answered,  with  a  smile, 
"and  every  human  being  has  ears  and  a  heart.  In  time  I  can 
make  people  listen  to  me  and,  when  they  listen,  I  can  do  what 
I  like  with  them." 

"/  thought  that  before  I  made  my  first  speech.  You've 
not  been  broken  by  the  House  of  Commons  yet,  Raney." 

"And  I  doubt  if  I  shall  ever  have  the  chance.    I  didn't  go 


THE  FIVE  DAYS     ^  347 

up  there  to-day  because  I  doubted  if  I  should  ever  be  able 
to  sit  there  again.  After  all,  that's  only  one  platform, 
and  Wesley,  Newman,  Tolstoi  got  on  without  it.  If  the  fire's 
inside  you " 

"And  how  do  you  start?"  I  interrupted. 

"On  the  simplest  things.  I've  got  a  commonplace  mind, 
George,  with  no  subtlety  or  cleverness,  but  it's  frightfully 
hard  to  shake.  From  experience  I  know  that  hunger  and 
physical  pain  and  disease  and  indignity  are  terrible  things — 
the  whole  world  knows  it — and  we  must  put  an  end  to  them. 
I've  only  learned  two  lessons  in  life,  and  they  came  to  me  on 
the  same  day — I've  told  you  about  it  before — when  I  fainted 
from  want  of  food,  and  a  prostitute,  dying  of  consumption, 
fed  me.  I  don't  aim  higher  than  that,  old  man — to  put  an 
end  to  human  suffering.  There's  little  a  man  can't  do  by  ex- 
ample and  teaching,  if  he  knows  how  to  touch  primitive 
imagination.  .  .  .  I'm  quite  commonplace;  I've  got  the  tem- 
perament of  a  Salvation  Army  man — and  like  him  I  can 
make  people  shout,  or  laugh,  or  tremble,  or  cry." 

Once  again  I  put  a  question  that  I  had  asked  him  years 
before  in  Ireland. 

"What  can  you  do  with  me,  Raney,  or  a  hundred 
thousand  other  low-flying,  unimaginative,  class-conscious 
souls,  steeped  in  materialism  and  taught  from  childhood  to 
repress  emotion?  To  get  rid  of  selfishness  and  muddle,  to 
make  us  alert  and  sympathetic,  you  must  change  human 
nature — set  the  world  in  the  path  of  one  of  Wells'  comets " 

"And  can't  you  see  the  comet  approaching?"  He  stood 
still,  with  hands  outstretched,  appealing,  and  in  his  eye  shone 
the  light  of  a  visionary.  "We  shall  fight  to  preserve  an  ideal, 
side  by  side,  with  disregard  of  class-consciousness.  We 
shall  fight  to  maintain  our  toleration  and  justice,  and  so  that 
no  man  may  ever  have  to  fight  again.  Do  you  think  we  can 
come  back  with  the  scream  of  a  shell  in  our  ears  to  take  up 
the  old  narrowness  and  futility?  Shall  we  re-establish  a 
social  barrier  between  men  who've  undertaken  the  same 
charge?  Shall  we  save  this  country  from  invasion  so  that 
sweated  labour  may  be  perpetuated?"  His  voice  had  grown 


348  SONIA 

quicker  and  quicker  until  he  stopped  suddenly,  panting  for 
breath.    "George,  you  don't  know  the  soul  of  a  people." 
"I  knew  it  before  the  comet." 
"You  don't  know  it  capabilities." 
"I  hope  you  will  prove  me  wrong,  Raney." 
On  the   following  morning  Arden,   O'Rane,  Loring  and 
I  returned  to  town.    That  Tuesday  was  the  last  of  the  Five 
Days  since  Germany  declared  herself  in  a  state  of  war,  the 
twelfth — only    the    twelfth — since    the    Austrian    ultimatum. 
We  all  of  us  felt  that  we  should  at  least  get  our  news  some 
hours  earlier  than  at  Chepstow,  and  for  my  own  part  I  had  to 
see  what  policy  Bertrand  proposed  to  adopt  with  "Peace." 
Also,   I   had  wired  at  length  to  the  Whips'   Office,   telling 
young  Jellaby  to  take  a  note  of  my  name  in  case  any  over- 
worked Minister  came  in  search  of  volunteers  for  his  depart- 
ment. 

On  our  way  up  we  read  the  full  text  of  the  previous  day's 
speeches.  They  added  little  to  our  knowledge,  but  the 
sensationalism  of  all  Fleet  Street  could  hardly  smear  the  bold 
outline  of  the  Commons'  scene.  As  well  as  if  I  had  been  there, 
I  could  visualize  the  haggard  faces  on  the  Treasury  Bench  as 
the  Foreign  Secretary  expounded  a  situation  that  momentarily 
changed  and  acquired  new  complexity.  I  could  almost  see 
him  phrasing  his  speech  as  he  hurried  to  the  House  and  dis- 
carding sentence  after  sentence  as  an  eleventh-hour  dispatch 
was  handed  him  to  read  on  the  way.  The  speech  itself 
breathed  an  air  of  fever,  like  the  news  of  the  Indian  floods  in 
1903,  when  at  one  end  of  the  line  I  read  scraps  of  a  message 
transmitted  from  a  station  that  was  swept  away  before  the 
end.  I  knew  something,  too,  of  my  House  of  Commons  and 
its  glorious  uncertainty;  to  some  extent  I  could  guess  at  the 
feelings  of  a  man  who  called  for  its  decision  in  an  unexpected 
war. 

On  reaching  Paddington  I  sent  my  luggage  to  Princes 
Gardens  and  drove  to  the  Club  for  luncheon.  The  extended 
Bank  Holiday  gave  the  streets  an  unfamiliar  aspect,  like  an 
industrial  town  at  the  beginning  of  a  lock-out.  My  driver 
took  me  round  through  Cockspur  Street,  and  I  found  the 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  349 

White  Star  offices  thronged  with  Americans  newly  mindful  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine.  They  pressed  foward  in  a  vociferous 
queue  and,  as  the  first  arrivals  fought  their  way  back  into  the 
street,  they  could  have  sold  their  passage  tickets  ten  times  over 
at  their  own  price. 

In  a  block  by  the  Crimean  Monument  I  heard  my  name 
called,  and  Summertown  passed  with. a  hurried  wave  of  the 
hand.  I  had  seen  him  in  mess  uniform  a  dozen  times  when 
dining  with  the  King's  Guard;  this  was  the  first  occasion  on 
which  I  had  met  him  dressed  for  active  service.  It  was  also 
the  last  time  I  saw  him  alive.  All  the  way  down  Pall  Mall 
I  saw  unfamiliar  khaki  on  men  I  had  never  regarded  as 
soldiers,  and,  as  I  mounted  the  steps  of  the  Club,  Tom  Dain- 
ton  ran  down  and  engaged  my  vacant  taxi,  only  pausing  to 
murmur  in  his  deep  voice: 

"Bore  about  this  war,  isn't  it?  I'd  arranged  to  take  my 
wife  to  Scotland." 

The  Club  itself  was  reconciled  to  the  inevitable,  and  the 
members  forestalled  the  Government  by  some  hours  in  issuing 
their  ultimatum.  I  heard  such  names  as  'Wilhelmshaven,' 
'The  Sound'  and  'Kiel'  ^being  flung  about  with  age-long 
familiarity  by  some,  while  others  turned  furtively  to  an 
atlas  or  inquired  angrily  why  no  geography  was  taught  in  the 
public  schools.  A  group  of  barristers,  flannel-suited  for  the 
Long  Vacation,  stood  in  one  corner  prophesying  a  shortage 
of  food;  and  before  long  Crabtree,  whom  I  had  not  seen  half 
a  dozen  times  in  as  many  years,  detached  himself  and  cashed 
a  cheque  in  the  dining-room  to  the  limit  set  by  the  Club  rules. 
More  than  one  father  of  a  family,  following  his  example, 
wrote  unpractical  grocery  orders  or  dispatched  tinned  tongues 
to  helpless  dependents  in  the  country.  From  food  shortage 
to  bread  riots  was  a  short  step,  and  I  overheard  a  circle  of 
Civil  Servants  discussing  the  early  enrolment  of  special  con- 
stables. 

The  long  'Parliamentary'  table  in  the  dining-room  was 
in  a  condition  of  crowded  excitement,  and  each  new-comer 
brought  a  fresh  list  of  the  Ministers  who  had  resigned  and  the 
reasons  for  which  they  had  wobbled  back  into  the  fold.  No- 


350  SONIA 

where  did  I  hear  it  suggested  that  war  was  avoidable,  hardly 
anywhere  that  it  should  be  avoided,  though  two  Radical  mem- 
bers who  had  consistently  voted  against  the  increased  naval 
estimates  in  1909  declaimed  against  the  dispatch  of  land 
forces  and  asserted  that  all  must  be  left  to  a  happily  invincible 
Fleet. 

In  the  first  year  of  the  war  I  often  marvelled  at  the  un- 
critical credulity  of  educated  men  who  believed  and  handed 
on  every  rumour  or  theory  of  the  moment — from  the  execu- 
tion of  Admirals  in  the  Tower  to  the  certain  arrival  of 
Cossacks  in  Berlin  by  Christmas.  I  lay  no  claim  to  superior 
wisdom,  as  for  six  months  I  myself  believed  all  such  stories 
as  simply  as  I  afterwards  rejected  true  with  false.  From  the 
day  of  the  ultimatum  there  was  a  ready  disposition  to  canvass 
opinions  without  considering  their  worth,  and  before  the  end 
of  luncheon  I  was  ladling  out  second-hand  judgements  on  the 
French  cavalry  or  on  reputed  defects  of  meeting  recoil  as 
observed  in  the  practice  of  German  field  artillery.  Had  I 
not  been  absent  from  the  Club  for  nearly  a  week?  Must  I 
not  be  presumed  to  have  new  information  or  fresh  points  of 
view? 

As  I  paid  my  bill,  Jellaby  hurried  up  with  the  suggestion 
that  I  should  report  next  day  at  the  Admiralty. 
"Is  war  quite  certain?"  I  asked. 

"As  certain  as  anything  in  an  uncertain  world,"  he  an- 
swered. 

In  the  smoking-room  I  retired  to  a  corner  to  read  the 
latest  telegrams  and  drink  my  coffee  in  solitude.  One  was  as 
impossible  as  the  other,  and  lest  I  be  thought  to  exaggerate 
I  will  not  say  how  many  men  pursued  me  to  find  out  what  I 
had  been  discussing  with  Jellaby.  I  should  be  sorry  even  to 
guess  at  the  number  of  unknown  men  who  entered  into  con- 
versation, but  I  cannot  forget  the  omnipresence  of  Sir  Adolf 
Erckmann.  In  less  worthy  moments  I  suspect  him  of  de- 
liberately displaying  what  he  conceived  to  be  sufficiently 
flamboyant  patriotism  to  obscure  the  unhappy  circumstance 
of  his  name.  Certainly  he  edged  from  one  end  of  the  room  to 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  351 

the  other,  unsparingly  subjecting  man  after  man  to  an  un- 
varying monologue. 

"These  Chermans  wand  a  lezzon,"  he  grunted  into  his 
beard.  "And  we'll  give  id  'em,  hein?  They  thought  Bridain 
wouldn't  gom  in.  We  gan  dell  a  differend  story,  hein?" 

His  scarlet  face  and  head,  bronzed  with  the  wind  and  sun 
of  his  recent  tour  on  the  Continent,  was  moist  with  exertion 
by  the  time  he  penned  me  in  my  corner. 

"How  long  is  it  going  to  last,  Erckmann  ?"  I  asked — with 
some  idea  of  testing  the  resources  of  his  English. 

"How  long  ?"  he  repeated,  pulling  truculently  at  his  tangled 
beard.  "A  month,  hein?  Doo  months  ad  the  oudside.  I'm 
a  bangker,  my  boy.  I  know,  hein?  If  they  doan'd  ged  to 
Baris  in  a  vordnide,  they're  done,  zmashed,  pancrupd.  You 
ead  your  Grizmas  dinner  in  Berlin,  hein?" 

I  resisted  the  obvious  retort  and  made  an  excuse  to  get 
home  to  my  uncle. 

IV 

The  first  news  I  received  on  reaching  Princes  Gardens 
was  that  my  uncle  was  unwell  and  wished  to  see  me  at  once. 

"No,  sir,  I  can't  tell  you  no  more  than  that,"  said  Filson 
tearfully,  and  I  judged  that  to  serve  Bertrand  had  been  a 
task  of  difficulty  during  the  past  five  days. 

I  found  my  uncle  seated  in  his  bedroom  with  a  rug  over 
his  knees,  conspicuously  doing  nothing.  Little  threads  of 
blood  discoloured  the  whites  of  his  eyes,  and  he  seemed 
curiously  shrunken  and  old.  He  looked  at  me  in  silence  for  a 
few  moments  after  I  had  shut  the  door,  then  remarked  care- 
lessly : 

"I  thought  it  would  last  my  time,  George." 

"If  we  live  to  the  end  of  it  we  shall  have  seen  the  last 
war,"  I  answered. 

He  snorted  derisively. 

"Till  next  time !  As  long  as  you  let  children  point  loaded 
pistols  .  .  ."' 

He  broke  off  and  sat  staring  before  him. 


352  SONIA 

"Filson  told  me  you'd  been  seedy,"  I  said. 

"Oh,  if  you  talk  to  a  fool  like  Filson !"  my  uncle  exclaimed. 
"I  went  down  to  the  House  yesterday  ..."  He  paused 
and  murmured  to  himself,  as  though  unconscious  of  my 
presence.  "We  couldn't  help  ourselves,  you  know.  I  don't 
see  what  else  we  could  have  done.  ...  I  was  down  there, 
George,  and  walked  home  thinking  it  all  over  and,  when  I 
got  in,  I  tumbled  down  in  the  hall.  Good  God!  if  a  man 
mayn't  fall  about  in  his  own  hall  .  .  .  !  Filson  was  rather 
surprised,  but  I'm  perfectly  all  right."  He  kicked  away  the 
rug  and  drew  himself  shakily  erect.  "Seventy-nine,  George, 
but  I  must  live  a  bit  longer — till  the  Kaiser's  been  strangled 
in  the  bowels  of  the  Crown  Prince.  ...  By  all  that's  holy, 
if  I  were  fifty  years  younger !" 

There  was  something  pathetically  terrible  in  his  disillu- 
sionment and  anger  with  all  things  created.  As  he  stood 
with  clenched  fists  trembling  above  his  head,  I  saw  his  body 
sway  and  sprang  foward  to  catch  him. 

"You  must  take  things  a  bit  easy,  Bertrand,"  I  said. 

"When  you're  my  age  .  .  ."he  began.  "Bah,  you  never 
will  be,  your  lot  dies  off  like  so  many  flies.  Another  five 
years  will  see  you  out,  and  on  my  soul  I  think  you're  to  be 
envied.  I've  lived  long  enough  to  see  everything  I  cared  for 
shattered.  We've  got  war  at  our  doors,  and,  before  it's  been 
going  on  six  weeks,  mark  my  words !  personal  liberty  will  be 
at  an  end,  you'll  be  under  a  military  despotism,  the  freedom 
of  the  Press  ...  By  the  way,  I  sent  some  neutrality  lunatics 
to  see  you  on  Sunday." 

"I'm  afraid  I  didn't  give  them  much  satisfaction,"  I  said. 
"Look  here,  Bertrand,  about  this  paper " 

"What  paper?" 

"  'Peace.' " 

"There's  no  such  paper.  Don't  stare,  George;  you  look 
as  if  you  were  only  half  awake.  'Peace,'  indeed  .  .  . ! 
Why,  my  God!  I've  at  least  outgrown  that  phase.  I  tele- 
phoned to  M'Clellan  to  bring  me  the  electros  for  the  headings 
and  I  went  through  the  damned  mocking  things  with  a 
hammer!"  He  paused  to  breathe  heavily,  with  one  hand 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  353 

pressed  to  his  side.  "I  think  I'd  rather  be  alone  for  the 
present,  old  boy,"  he  went  on,  with  sudden  gentleness.  "You 
go  off  and  amuse  yourself  at  the  Club,  you're  too  young  to  be 
in  the  same  room  as  my  thoughts.  If  you've  got  your  securi- 
ties pass-book,  you  might  do  worse  than  jot  down  what  you 
think  your  income's  likely  to  be  the  next  few  years.  Don't 
be  too  optimistic  about  it,  you  can  run  a  pencil  through  three- 
quarters  of  your  investments  abroad.  I've  given  everybody 
notice  here,  to  be  on  the  safe  side ;  and  you'll  be  well  advised 
to  overhaul  your  expenditure." 

I  was  half-way  through  my  dressing  when  Mayhew  tele- 
phoned to  invite  me  to  dinner  at  the  Penmen's  Club.  He  had 
lived  night  and  day  at  the  "Wicked  World"  office  since  leav- 
ing Chepstow,  quarrelling,  arguing  and  bribing  to  get  leave  to 
go  abroad. 

"And  now  I'm  at  a  loose  end,"  he  told  me,  as  we  stood  in 
the  hall  waiting  for  O'Rane  and  Loring.  "The  Press  Combine 
is  going  to  work  all  it  knows  to  get  Kitchener  put  into  thq 
War  Office,  and  from  what  I  remember  of  Omdurman  and 
South  Africa,  war  correspondents  aren't  at  a  premium  with 
him.  It's  so  hard  to  get  out  of  this  damned  country  at 
present,  or  I  should  be  half-way  to  St.  Petersburg  by  now." 

I  told  him  of  my  uncle's  decision  to  discontinue  "Peace," 
and  he  whistled  regretfully. 

"Poor  old  Fleet  Street!"  he  exclaimed.  "There's  a  bad 
time  coming  for  the  parasites.  The  'Wicked  World'  has 
sacked  half  its  men,  including  me,  and  the  chief  proposes  to 
write  the  paper  himself." 

"That's  a  bit  stiff,"  I  said. 

"And  it's  not  as  though  I  were  a  new-comer,"  he  con- 
tinued aggrievedly,  "or  hadn't  brought  off  one  or  two  fair- 
sized  scoops  in  the  last  few  years.  Hallo,  here's  Raney !" 

Loring  arrived  a  few  moments  later,  and  we  went  into 
dinner.  I  had  to  remind  myself  that  three  out  of  the  four  of 
us  had  travelled  up  from  Chepstow  the  same  morning  and 
that,  for  all  the  transitions  of  the  day,  war  had  not  yet  been 
declared  and  Germany  had  till  midnight  to  frame  a  reply  to 
our  ultimatum. 


354  SONIA 

"Never  let  it  be  said  that  the  British  race  is  not  adapt- 
able," Loring  remarked,  when  I  told  him  of  my  intended 
descent  on  the  Admiralty.  "I've  spent  my  afternoon  trying 
to  get  a  commission." 

"Any  luck?" 

"They  said  I  was  too  old,  so  I'm  to  have  a  staff  appoint- 
ment. Raney  and  Val  Arden  will  shortly  be  seen  swanking 
about  as  Second  Lieutenants  of  the  Coldstream  Guards. 
Youth  will  be  served!  What  the  devil  does  a  staff  captain 
have  to  do?" 

"Or  a  Civil  Servant?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  you're  all  right;  you  just  turn  up  at  twelve  and  go 
out  to  lunch  till  three.  I've  been  really  busy  to-day.  I've 
offered  House  of  Steynes  and  the  places  at  Chepstow  and 
Market  Harborough  to  the  War  Office  as  hospitals.  Mamma 
will  run  one,  Amy  another  and  Violet  the  third " 

"Hospitals?"  I  murmured. 

In  the  South  African  War  the  wounded  had  died  or  been 
nursed  back  to  life  thousands  of  miles  from  England.  It 
required  an  effort  of  imagination  to  visualize  men  like  Tom 
Dainton  or  Summertown,  whole  and  hale  one  day,  under  fire 
forty-eight  hours  later  and  perhaps  back  in  England  by  the 
end  of  the  week,  crawling  north  from  Southampton  or  Ports- 
mouth by  hospital  train,  broken  and  maimed  for  life.  Per- 
haps all  our  imaginations  were  working  on  the  same  lines,  for 
after  a  pause  Loring  changed  the  subject  by  asking  where 
O'Rane  had  spent  his  time. 

"City,"  was  the  short  answer. 

"Things  pretty  bad  ?"  I  asked. 

"Neither  a  borrower  nor  a  lender  be,"  he  replied.  "I'm 
fairly  sorry  for  my  own  firm,  but  Heaven  help  anyone  with 
much  money  out  that  he  wants  to  get  back  quickly.  They 
talk  of  dosing  the  Stock  Exchange  and  declaring  a  mora- 
torium." 

"The  Club  was  a  sad  sight  at  lunch-time,"  I  said.  "Every- 
body talking  about  moving  into  a  smaller  house  or  giving  up 
his  car " 

jMayhew  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed. 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  355 

"The  one  good  thing  I've  heard  to-day!"  he  cried.  "Do 
you  men  know  an  objectionable  fat  youth  named  Webster? 
He  came  to  the  'Wicked  World'  office  this  morning  and  tried 
to  stick  us  with  a  long,  tearful  account  of  his  escape  from 
Germany.  Apparently  he  had  no  end  of  a  time  getting  away, 
and  the  Germans  commandeered  a  brand  new  Rolls-Royce 
and  kicked  him  over  the  frontier  on  foot." 

"And  I  had  half -made  up  my  mind  to  take  a  cure  at 
Nauheim,"  I  said  reflectively. 

"You're  well  out  of  it,"  said  Mayhew.  "We  had  a  curious 
story  in  the  office  to-day  from  Switzerland — rather  a  sinister 
business  if  it's  true.  A  party  of  Americans — father,  mother 
and  two  daughters — were  motoring  through  Germany  when 
the  state  of  war  was  declared.  They  were  held  up,  arrested 
and  deprived  of  their  car.  A  few  hours  later  the  parents  were 
released  and  sent  under  escort  to  the  frontier  in  a  carriage 
with  the  blinds  down.  The  girls  have  never  been  seen  again." 

It  was  the  first  of  many  similar  stories,  and  I  have  no 
idea  how  much  truth  it  contained.  None  of  us  yet  appreci- 
ated the  lengths  to  which  'civilized  warfare'  could  be  carried, 
but  one  of  the  things  that  change  little  throughout  the  cen- 
turies is  the  position  of  women  in  the  midst  of  armed  troops. 

The  active  life  of  the  Penmen's  Club  was  from  six  till 
eight  and  again  from  one  till  three  in  the  morning.  By  the 
time  we  had  finished  dinner  the  coffee-room  was  deserted,  and 
I  suggested  an  adjournment  to  the  Eclectic  to  await  midnight 
and  the  answer  of  the  German  Government.  Time  was  no 
object,  and  we  walked  slowly  down  Fleet  Street  and  the 
Strand.  Opposite  Romano's  a  piano  organ  was  grinding  out 
its  appointed  six  tunes,  and  a  ring  of  urchins  held  hands  and 
danced  up  and  down  the  gutter  singing : 

"Dixie!    All  abo-o-oard  for  Dixie!" 

"Damn  that  song !"  Loring  exclaimed  irritably. 
By  Charing  Cross  we  halted  to  let  the  traffic  pour  out  of 
the  station  yard,  and  I  felt  myself  touched  on  the  shoulder. 
"Surely  George  Oakleigh?     You  don't  remember  me?" 


356  SONIA 

I  looked  at  a  shabby,  thin  man  with  bearded  face  and 
restless  eyes.  Then  we  shook  hands,  and  I  whispered  to 
Loring  over  my  shoulder  to  take  the  others  on  to  the  Club 
and  await  me. 

"That  was  Jim  Loring,  wasn't  it?"  asked  the  shabby  man 
eagerly. 

"Yes,  and  the  other  two  were  Mayhew  and  O'Rane ;  they 
were  some  years  junior  to  us,  of  course.  Quite  like  the  old 
days  in  Matheson's,  Draycott?" 

He  nodded  and  glanced  bemusedly  at  the  glaring  lights  of 
the  Strand  and  the  thundering  stream  of  traffic. 

"I've  not  seen  you  since  I  cut  you  in  the  Luxembourg 
Gardens  a  dozen  years  ago,"  he  said. 

"I  doubt  if  I've  been  in  Paris  six  times  since  then,"  I 
answered. 

"And  I've  not  been  in  England  at  all.  I'm — I'm  liable  to 
arrest,  you  know,  but  they  made  a  clearance  of  us  from 
Boulogne.  We  were  a  sorry  crew,  Oakleigh." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  now?"  I  asked.  "I'll  see  you 
through  as  far  as  I  can." 

My  hand  was  moving  to  my  pocket,  but  he  stopped  me  with 
a  gesture. 

"I  don't  want  money,  old  chap." 

"You  look  as  if  you  wanted  a  square  meal,  Draycott." 

He  laughed  with  a  bitterness  in  which  there  was  little 
pride. 

"And  a  bath.  And  some  new  clothes.  I  shall  get  'em 
all  in  a  few  days." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  I  repeated.  "If  I  may  ad- 
vise you,  you've  been  out  of  this  country  long  enough  for 
Scotland  Yard  to  regard  you  leniently.  If  you  go  to  them 
frankly " 

He  shook  his  head  decisively. 

"I've  no  doubt  they'd  let  me  stay  here  if  I  behaved  myself, 
but  it's  no  good.  I  can't  get  back  to  my  old  position,  there 
are  too  many  people  who  remember  me.  I  should  never  have 
stopped  Jim  Loring  as  I  stopped  you.  No,  I'm  going  vaguely 
into  the  Midlands,  to  some  recruiting  office " 


THE  FIVE  DAYS  357 

"They  won't  take  you,"  I  interrupted.  "You're  my  age, 
you're  thirty-five." 

"I'm  twenty-nine  for  the  purposes  of  the  Army,"  he 
answered.  "And,  if  that's  too  old,  I'm  twenty-seven.  I  shall 
take  this  beard  off,  of  course.  But,  look  here,  I'm  keeping 
you " 

"I  want  to  see  you  again,  Draycott,"  I  said,  as  we  shook 
hands. 

"Better  not.  And  don't  tell  those  other  men.  It  was 
just  a — a  whim.  We  were  always  rather  pals  at  Melton,  you 
know.  ..." 

Nearly  a  year  later  Corporal  Draycott  of  the  Midland 
Light  Infantry  was  recommended  for  a  Distinguished  Con- 
duct Medal,  but  before  the  dispatch  reached  England  he  was 
dead  of  dysentery  in  the  plague  pit  of  Gallipoli. 

When  I  reached  the  Club  it  was  to  find  the  same  new 
spirit  of  gregariousness  that  I  had  noticed  at  luncheon,  but 
in  an  intensified  degree.  The  old  antipathies  were  forgotten, 
and  from  the  crowded  hall  to  the  echoing  gallery  stretched  a 
living  chain  of  eager,  garrulous  men.  I  passed  from  one  to 
another  under  a  hail  of  questions,  as  my  own  great-grand- 
father may  have  done  a  century  before  when  'the  town' 
gathered  beneath  that  same  roof  to  await  news  of  Leipzig. 

Loring  had  taken  refuge  in  the  deserted  card-room,  and 
we  had  been  sitting  there  raking  over  the  old  possibilities  for 
half  an  hour  when  the  door  opened  and  Sir  Roger  Dainton 
entered  in  uniform. 

"I've  been  looking  for  you  all  the  evening,  George,"  he 
exclaimed.  "I — look  here,  I  want  your  uncle  to  do  me  a 
favour.  I've  been  to  his  house,  but  they  told  me  he  was 
seedy.  I  can't  get  any  news  of  Sonia." 

O'Rane  sat  upright  in  his  chair,  scattering  a  cloud  of 
flaky  cigar-ash  over  his  trousers.  His  face  was  hidden  as  he 
leant  forward  to  brush  it  away,  but  I  wondered  whether  he 
was  recalling  with  me  Mayhew's  story  of  the  missing  Ameri- 
can girls. 

"But  I  thought  she  was  home,"  I  said.  "Webster's  back, 
and  I  was  talking  to  Erckmann  here  after  lunch." 


358  SONIA 

"She  stayed  behind,"  Dainton  told  me.  "It's  a  long  rig- 
marole, and  I'll  go  into  it  later.  I've  been  to  the  Foreign 
Office  and  simply  couldn't  get  past  the  door.  I  was  thinking 
that  as  your  uncle  rather  had  the  ear  of  the  Ministry  .  .  . 
You  see,  I'm  mobilized,  so  I  can't  do  much  myself.  Sonia's 
been  wiring  all  over  the  place — Bayreuth,  Munich,  Heaven 
knows  where,  giving  a  different  address  each  time.  Where 
she  is  at  present,  I  haven't  the  faintest  idea." 

I  knew  that  neither  Bertrand  nor  I  could  help  him,  but 
for  very  civility  I  had  to  offer  him  the  chance  of  seeing  my 
uncle.  O'Rane  followed  me  downstairs  and  helped  me  into 
my  coat,  observing  dispassionately: 

"This    is  a  fool's  errand,  George." 

"I  don't  need  to  be  told  that,  Raney,"  I  answered. 

"I'm  staying  the  night  with  Jim,"  he  went  on.  "You 
might  come  and  report  progress  on  your  way  to  the  Admiralty. 
As  early  as  you  like.  We've  no  time  to  lose." 

"What  do  you  propose  to  do?"  I  inquired,  as  we  hurried 
into  the  hall. 

He  laughed  at  the  question. 

"Well,  we  can't  very  well  leave  Sonia  in  Germany,  can 
we?"  he  asked.  "At  least,  /  can't  Early  to-morrow,  mind. 
Good  night,  old  man." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

DEAD  YESTERDAY 

".  .   .   I  myself  commend 
Unto  thy  guidance  from  this  hour; 
Oh!  let  my  weakness  have  an  end! 
Give  unto  me,  made  lowly  wise, 
The  spirit  of  self-sacrifice. .  .  ." 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH,  "Ode  to  Duty." 


AT  eleven  o'clock  at  night — by  West  European  time — 
on  Tuesday  the  fourth  of  August,  a  state  of  war  was 
established  between  Great  Britain  and  Germany. 

Three-quarters  of  an  hour  later  I  stood  on  the  steps  of 
my  uncle's  house  and  said  good-bye  to  Sir  Roger  Dainton. 
Our  united  eloquence  had  half -convinced  him  that  it  was 
merely  vexatious  to  goad  the  Foreign  Office  at  a  moment 
when  in  all  likelihood  our  Ambassadors  in  Berlin  and  Vienna 
were  being  handed  their  passports.  Representations  must 
henceforth  be  made  through  a  neutral  channel,  and  he  left 
us  with  the  intention  of  calling  early  next  day  at  the  American 
Embassy.  My  uncle's  confidential  opinion  of  father  and 
daughter  is  uncomplimentary  and  irrelevant. 

The  facts  in  the  case,  as  given  me  between  the  Club  and 
Princes  Gardens,  were  that  Sonia  had  left  England  in  April, 
a  few  days  after  our  meeting  at  Covent  Garden.  Sir  Roger 

359 


360  SONIA 

was  in  the  predicament  of  disliking  the  whole  idea  of  the  tour 
and  being  unable  to  say  that  a  man  who  was  good  enough 
to  be  trusted  for  early  financial  advice  was  not  also  good 
enough  to  be  trusted  with  a  worldly  young  woman  of  eight- 
and-twenty.  The  Baroness  Kohnstadt,  nominal  hostess  of  the 
party,  might  have  her  name  coupled  with  that  of  Lord  Pen- 
nington,  but  she  was  Sir  Adolf's  sister  and  had  been  at  school 
with  Lady  Dainton  in  Dresden.  Baronesses,  moreover,  are 
always  Baronesses.  Of  the  relations  existing  between  Erck- 
mann  and  Mrs.  Welman,  everything  was  suspected  and  nothing 
known.  Webster's  record  was  only  blemished  by  a  breach 
of  promise  case — which  might  have  happened  to  anyone. 
Dainton  shrugged  his  shoulders  resignedly,  and  his  daughter 
took  silence  for  assent. 

During  May  and  June  the  party  toured  through  France, 
Spain  and  Italy;  in  the  middle  of  July  a  postcard  announced 
that  they  had  reached  Bayreuth  and  that  the  Festival  was 
in  full  swing.  Then  followed  confusion. 

1.  Sonia  had  wired  from  Bayreuth  asking  for  money  to 

be  sent  her  in  Nurnberg. 

2.  Sir  Roger  had  immediately  remitted  £30  by  registered 

post. 

3.  Four  days  later,  on  presentation  of  the  Austrian  ulti- 

matum to  Servia,  Sir  Roger  had  telegraphed  order- 
ing Sonia  to  return  home  at  once. 

4.  Two  days  afterwards  a  second  telegram  was  received 

from  Sonia,  "Must  have  money  wire  Hotel  de 
1'Europe  Munich  or  post  Hotel  Continental  Inns- 
pruck." 

5.  Her  father  had  telegraphed  another  £30  to  Munich, 

asking  in  addition  where  Sonia  was  going  and  what 
she  was  doing. 

6.  Sir  Adolf  had  called  on  Dainton  at  the  House  of  Com- 

mons late  on  August  Bank  Holiday  to  announce 
that: 

(a)    Sonia  had  lingered  at   Bayreuth,  promising 

to  follow  as  soon  as  Webster's  car  was  in 

order. 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  361 

(b)  Webster,  arriving  alone,  alleged  that  she  was 
returning  immediately  to  England. 

(c)  They  had  barely  escaped  into  France  before 
the  declaration  of  war,  and 

(rf)  They  hoped  she  had  enjoyed  a  comfortable 
journey  home. 

I  drove  to  Loring  House  after  breakfast  next  day,  put 
the  facts  on  paper  and  fitted  the  date  to  each. 

"That  little  swine  Webster  could  throw  some  light  on 
this,"  O'Rane  muttered  between  his  teeth  as  the  three  of  us 
tried  to  read  a  connected  story  into  the  fragments. 

"Well,  let's  get  hold  of  him,"  said  Loring.  "He's  prob- 
ably in  town.  Mayhew  saw  him  yesterday." 

"Oh,  it's  only  to  satisfy  idle  curiosity,"  O'Rane  answered. 
"The  party  starts  out  from  Bayreuth,  leaving  Sonia  and 
Webster  to  follow.  They  don't  follow,  and  Sonia  flies  off 
north  to  Niirnberg  and  wires  for  money.  That  means  there 
was  a  scene — he  probably  proposed  or  tried  to  kiss  her  or 
something — and  she  lets  him  have  it  between  the  eyes.  Be- 
fore she  receives  the  money  she  finds  she's  put  her  head 
in  a  hornet's  nest — armies  mobilizing  on  both  sides  of  her 
— and  turns  south  to  Munich  to  get  away  in  the  opposite  di- 
rection. She's  begged,  borrowed  or  stolen  enough  to  reach 
Innspruck  and  there  she's  stuck.  Old  Dainton's  wiring  money 
all  over  the  globe,  but  I  don't  suppose  a  penny  of  it  reaches 
her.  As  like  as  not  she's  been  arrested." 

"And  what  then?"  I  asked. 

"If  she  behaves  herself  they  may  let  her  go  as  soon  as 
they've  finished  moving  troops.  If  she  doesn't,  they'll  keep 
her  till  the  end  of  the  war." 

He  walked  up  and  down  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets 
and  a  pipe  thrust  jauntily  out  of  one  corner  of  his  mouth. 
The  story  of  the  missing  American  girls  was  still  fresh  in  my 
mind,  and  I  felt  little  of  his  apparent  cheerfulness. 

"It's  the  deuce  of  a  position,"  said  Loring.  "When  will 
Dainton  be  through  with  the  Ambassador?" 

"You  can  ring  him  up  now,"  said  O'Rane.  "They'll  have 
been  very  polite,  and  they'll  do  all  thev  can,  and  the  matter 


362  SONIA 

will  receive  attention,  and  in  the  meantime  they've  just  as 
much  power  as  the  man  in  the  moon.  Dear  man,  the  whole 
of  Germany's  littered  with  pukka  Americans  this  time  of 
year,  and  the  Embassy  isn't  going  to  trouble  about  us  till  it's 
gathered  in  its  own  waifs  and  strays.  Dainton's  just  wasting 
their  time  and  his.  Anybody  else  got  any  helpful  sugges- 
tions ?" 

"You're  a  shade  discouraging,  Raney,"  I  said. 

He  laughed  without  malice,  and  his  black  eyes  shone  with 
the  excitement  of  coming  battle. 

"I'm  just  blowing  away  the  froth,"  he  explained.  "If  you 
want  business,  here  you  are.  Jim,  will  you  lend  me  five 
hundred  pounds?" 

Loring  nodded  without  a  word. 

"You  probably  won't  see  it  again  in  this  world." 

"I'll  risk  that." 

"Good.  Let  me  have  it  as  soon  as  possible,  and  all  in 
gold.  You  may  have  trouble  in  raising  it  just  now,  but  raise 
it  you  must.  Then  .  .  .  No,  I  think  that's  all.  As  soon 
as  you  let  me  have  it  I'll  get  under  way." 

"Where  are  you  off  to,  Raney?"  I  asked. 

I  feel  that  I  remain  human  even  in  a  crisis,  and  Loring's 
lack  of  curiosity  was  as  maddening  as  O'Rane's  uncommuni- 
cativeness. 

"I'm  going  for  a  short  holiday  abroad,"  he  answered, 
with  a  smile. 

"Ass!"  I  said. 

"Why?" 

"You're  of  military  age.  If  they  (don't  shoot  you  as  a 
spy,  they'll  lock  you  up  till  the  end  of  the  war." 

"Guess  you  underrate  the  pres-tige  of  the  U-nited  States 
Government,"  he  answered,  with  a  shattering  twang.  "I'm 
doing  this  stunt  as  an  American  citizen." 

Loring  jumped  up  and  laid  his  hand  on  O'Rane's  shoulder. 

"This  is  all  rot,  Raney,"  he  said.  "You  can't  go.  She's 
at  Innspruck — or  will  be  shortly.  Well,  that's  in  Austria, 
and  you've  made  Austria  a  bit  too  hot  to  be  comfortable." 

O'Rane  picked  up  a  cigar  from  the  box  on  the  table  and 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  363 

began  to  chew  one  end  with  lazy  deliberation.     Never  have 
I  met  a  grown  man  who  so  loved  to  play  a  part. 

"Say,  I  reckon  you're  mistaking  me  for  my  partner  O'Rane 
— David  B.  O'Rane,"  he  remarked.  "My  name's  Morris — 
James  Morris  of  Newtown,  Tennessee.  LordLoring?  Pleased 
to  meet  you,  Lord  Loring.  I'm  travelling  Europe  for  a 
piece  of  business.  The  Austrians  just  love  me.  I've  an  oil 
proposition  down  Carinthia  way  and  I  guess  I  got  the  whole 
durned  country  in  my  vest  pocket." 

"You  can't  go,"  Loring  repeated,  quite  unmoved  by  man- 
ner or  twang. 

"And  who'll  stop  me,  Lord  Loring?  See  here,  you 
haven't  figured  out  the  proposition.  I  start  away  as  an 
American  citizen  talking  good  United  States,  and  my  name 
stencilled  all  six  sides  of  my  baggage.  Well,  I  don't  anticipate 
dropping  across  Vienna,  and  any  blamed  customs-officer  will 
do  a  sight  of  head-scratching  before  he  measures  my  finger- 
prints or  hitches  me  out  o'  my  pants  to  see  if  I've  a  bowie- 
knife  scar  in  the  small  of  my  back.  They  got  their  war  to 
keep  'em  occupied  first  of  all.  And,  if  that  ain't  enough,  they 
can  look  at  my  passport  for  a  piece.  And,  when  they're  tired 
of  that,  they  can  wrap  'emselves  up  and  go  off  to  sleep  in  my 
naturalization  papers.  Guess  there's  nothing  much  wrong 
with  them  anyway."  He  turned  and  spat  scientifically  into 
the  fireplace,  warming  to  his  work.  "I've  thought  this  up 
some.  If  you'll  come  forward  with  a  better  stunt,  why !  start 
in  to  do  it  and  take  all  of  my  blessing  you  can  use.  Getting 
quit  of  Austria's  about  as  easy  as  going  through  hell  without 
singeing  your  pants.  For  you,  that  is.  You  don't  speak 
decent  German,  you've  no  more  hustle  to  you  than  a  maggot 
in  a  melon-patch,  the  rankest  breed  of  blind  beggar  on  a 
side  walk  couldn't  take  you  for  anything  but  a  Britisher. 
I've  told  you  what  the  Embassy's  been  saying  to  old  man 
Dainton.  If  you  think  you've  filed  a  patent  for  catching  the 
American  Eagle  by  the  tail  feathers,  cut  in  and  test  it :  there's 
not  a  dime  to  pay  for  entrance.  Otherwise,  keep  your  head 
shut  for  a  piece  while  James  Morris  gets  to  work.  I  been 
most  kinds  of  fool  in  my  time,  but  not  the  sort  that  goes  out 


364  SONIA 

of  his  way  to  hunt  big  game  with  a  can  of  flea-powder.  I'm 
not  out  for  that  brand  of  heroism.  I'm  going  now  'cos  I 
can't  find  much  use  for  any  other  way.  If  I  haven't  delivered 
the  goods  inside  of  a  fortnight,  you  can  picture  me  leaning 
graceful  and  easy  'gainst  a  wall  and  handing  round  prizes  for 
the  best  show  of  fixed  target  fancy  shooting.  And,  if  the 
United  States  don't  declare  war  inside  of  twenty-four  hours 
after  that,  you'll  know  I  been  wasting  my  time  and  getting 
all  I  deserve." 

He  ended  abruptly  and  regarded  us  with  a  provocative 
smile.  I  am  far  from  claiming  an  exhaustive  knowledge  of 
O'Rane's  character,  but  both  Loring  and  I  were  familiar  with 
a  certain  outthrust  of  the  lower  jaw  which  meant  that  further 
argument  was  superfluous. 

"When  d'you  start?"  I  asked. 

"Morris  ought  to  be  here  any  minute.  He's  lending  me 
an  approved  Saratoga  trunk  covered  with  most  convincing 
labels.  I  rang  him  up  last  night  after  you  left  the  Club. 
And  a  complete  set  of  papers  with  all  the  signs  and  counter- 
signs and  visas  you  can  imagine.  Morris  really  is  an  American 
citizen.  He  had  to  get  naturalized  when  we  moved  out  of 
Mexico  into  the  States  and  floated  some  of  our  concessions 
as  an  American  company.  You  won't  forget  about  the 
money,  Jim?" 

"Raney,  you're  an  awful  fool  to  go,"  said  Loring  uneasily. 

"My  dear  fellow,  you'd  do  exactly  the  same  thing  if  it 
were  Violet  out  there.  And  you'd  probably  make  a  hash  of 
it,"  he  added  unflatteringly.  "I  don't  mind  betting  I  get  Sonia 
away  without  even  calling  on  the  Ambassador.  I  shall  sugar 
a  bit,  and  bluff  a  bit,  and  bribe  a  bit.  They'll  probably  be  as 
keen  to  get  rid  of  her  as  she'll  be  to  go,  and  a  chance  to  be 
civil  to  the  great  United  States  isn't  to  be  disregarded  in 
war  times." 

Loring  shrugged  his  shoulders  resignedly. 

"I'll  see  about  the  money  at  once,"  he  said.  "I  suppose 
all  the  banks  are  shut  to-day,  but  I'll  let  you  have  it  as  soon 
as  I  can." 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  365 


ii 

O'Rane  had  come  very  near  the  truth  in  the  explanation 
he  hazarded  of  Sonia's  movements  and  changes  of  purpose. 

The  first  two  months  of  the  tour  had  been  uneventful. 
She  had  whirled  with  her  companions  through  one  country 
after  another,  too  busy  to  think  or  quarrel,  almost  too  busy 
to  be  conscious  of  herself:  it  was  only  as  they  left  the  long 
plains  of  Lombardy  behind  them,  and  mounted  the  first  green- 
clad  spurs  of  the  Alps,  that  a  restlessness  and  discontent  set- 
tled on  their  spirits.  There  was  a  new  tendency  to  find  fault 
with  their  hotels,  a  general  disagreement  over  what  they  were 
to  do  next,  a  candour  of  criticism  that  was  less  amiable  than 
free.  The  party  found  itself  disintegrating  and  taking  sides 
for  or  against  the  victim  of  the  day:  Lord  Pennington  con- 
fided to  Sonia  that  Sir  Adolf  and  the  Baroness  would  be  less 
unbearable  if  they  had  studied  table-manners.  Mrs.  Wet- 
man  complained  to  Webster  that  Lord  Pennington  ought  to 
dine  alone,  as  no  one — least  of  all  himself — knew  what  stories 
he  would  tell  in  mixed  company  when  he  felt  himself  replete 
and  cheerful.  Sir  Adolf  wondered — in  Mrs.  Welman's  hear- 
ing— what  "liddle  Zonia"  could  see  in  "thad  gread  zleeby 
Websder.  He  is  not  half  awag:  she  musd  zdir  him  up,  hein? 
He  is  a  gread  wed  planked." 

In  justice  to  Sonia,  who  never  let  sentiment  obscure  the 
main  chance,  it  should  be  said  that  she  had  seldom  regarded 
Webster  otherwise  than  as  a  beast  of  burden :  he  was  devoted 
and  docile,  would  lie  somnolently  in  his  corner  of  the  car 
without  venturing  on  "clever  conversation,"  and  could  be 
ignored  from  the  moment  when  he  tucked  the  dust-rug  round 
her  knees  till  the  time  when  she  dispatched  him  to  procure 
her  strawberries  in  a  wayside  village. 

Sometimes,  indeed,  she  may  have  wondered  lazily  what 
was  going  on  inside  the  sleepy  brain  behind  the  half-closed 
little  eyes ;  once  she  looked  on  with  amused  detachment  while 
Mrs.  Welman  tried  to  filch  him  from  her  side;  once,  too, 


366  SONIA 

she  tried  to  make  him  jealous  by  changing  places  with  the 
Baroness  and  driving  for  a  day  and  a  half  in  Lord  Penning- 
ton's  car.  This  last  experiment  was  slightly  humiliating,  as  her 
placid  slave  received  her  back  at  the  end  of  it  without  re- 
proach, surprise  or  rapture.  Sonia  half  decided  to  abandon 
the  invertebrate  to  the  first-comer  and  was  only  checked  by  a 
feeling  that  she  might  be  ostentatiously  resigning  an  empire 
she  had  never  won.  Alternatively  on  the  fourth  day  after 
their  arrival  at  Bayreuth,  in  the  purgatory  of  tedium  which 
a  Wagner  festival  must  provide  for  auditors  of  only  simulated 
enthusiasm,  she  accepted  Sir  Adolf's  challenge  and  set  herself 
to  rouse  "that  great  sleepy  Webster"  to  an  interest  in  herself. 

The  details  of  the  campaign  can  only  be  supplied  from 
imagination.  Sonia,  who  confessed  much,  and  Webster,  who 
preserved  his  customary  sphinx-like  silence,  united  in  sup- 
pressing all  reference  to  what  passed:  the  other  members  of 
the  party  saw  only  as  much  as  the  protagonists  thought  fit 
to  allow.  The  results — which  are  all  that  is  relevant  here 
— came  to  light  on  the  last  morning  of  their  stay  in  Bayreuth. 
Sir  Adolf  paid  the  bill,  ordered  his  car,  expounded  the  route 
and  drove  away.  Lord  Pennington  followed  suit,  only  waiting 
to  ask  if  Sonia  would  care  to  drive  with  the  Baroness  and 
himself,  as  Webster's  chauffeur  had  reported  trouble  with 
the  timing-gear.  Sonia  replied  that  she  would  give  the  car 
another  half -hour  to  come  to  its  senses,  and,  if  the  repairs 
were  not  complete  by  then,  Webster  would  have  to  bring 
her  on  by  train  and  leave  the  chauffeur  to  pursue  them  as 
best  he  might.  On  that  understanding  Lord  Pennington  also 
drove  away,  and  Sonia  wandered  through  the  gardens  in 
front  of  the  hotel  and  sent  Webster  once  every  quarter  of 
an  hour  to  inquire  what  progress  was  being  made. 

It  was  two  o'clock  before  they  got  under  way,  and  the 
car  ran  without  mishap  until  eight.  Then  they  halted  for 
dinner,  and  Webster  asked  if  Sonia  thought  it  advisable  to 
go  any  farther,  or  whether  they  should  stay  where  they  were 
till  the  following  morning. 

"We'll  start  again  the  moment  we've  finished  dinner," 
she  ordained,  with  great  firmness. 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  367 

"Right !"  said  Webster,  "but  we  shan't  get  in  till  about 
eleven.  D'you  mind  that?" 

"Doesn't  look  as  if  it  could  be  helped,"  she  answered. 
"But  I  don't  see  myself  staying  alone  with  you  in  a  village 
without  a  name  in  the  middle  of  Bavaria." 

Webster  said  nothing,  but  excused  himself  as  soon  as 
dinner  was  over  and  retired  to  discuss  the  condition  of  the 
car  with  his  chauffeur. 

"It's  held  up  all  right  so  far,"  he  reported  on  his  return, 
"but  I  don't  know  if  we  shall  get  through  without  a  break- 
down. Wouldn't  it  be  better ?" 

"We'll  start  at  once,  please,"  said  Sonia,  and  the  car  was 
ordered  without  further  delay. 

They  ran  uneventfully  from  nine  till  half -past  eleven: 
then,  as  they  left  the  single  street  of  a  slumbering  village, 
the  engines  became  suddenly  silent,  there ,  was  a  muttered 
oath  from  the  chauffeur,  and  the  car  slowed  down  and  came 
to  a  standstill  at  the  side  of  the  road. 

"What's  up?"  Webster  inquired,  without  any  great  show, 
of  interest. 

The  chauffeur  detached  a  headlight,  opened  the  bonnet 
and  explored  in  silence  for  a  few  moments.  Then  he  re- 
marked, "Ignition." 

Webster  lit  a  cigarette  and  leant  back  in  his  corner. 

"How  long's  it  going  to  take  you?"  asked  Sonia. 

"Can't  get  another  yard  to-night,  miss,"  was  the  answer. 
"If  you'll  get  out  and  give  a  hand,  sir,  we'll  push  her  back 
and  see  if  we  can  wake  anybody  up  in  the  village." 

Sonia  jumped  out  with  a  feeling  of  exasperation  towards 
Webster  for  the  untrustworthiness  of  his  car  and  herself  for 
refusing  Lord  Pennington's  offer.  They  walked  slowly  back 
to  the  village,  and  patrolled  the  one  street  till  the  chauffeur 
discovered  a  house  that  looked  like  an  inn,  and  battered  on 
the  door  with  a  spanner. 

"It  couldn't  be  helped,  you  know,"  Webster  urged  in 
anxious  apology  as  they  waited  in  front  of  the  silent  houses ; 
and  then,  to  make  his  words  more  convincing  by  iteration, 
"You  know,  it  simply  couldn't  be  helped." 


36*8  SONIA 

A  head  projected  itself  at  length  from  an  upper  window 
and  was  addressed  by  Webster  in  halting  German.  It  was 
withdrawn  after  the  exchange  of  a  few  sentences,  and  there 
came  a  sound  of  heavy  feet  on  the  stairs  and  a  hand  fumbling 
with  bolts  and  a  chain. 

"He  says  he's  not  got  much  accommodation,"  Webster 
explained,  "but  he'll  do  his  best." 

The  door  opened,  and  a  sleepy-eyed  landlord  admitted 
them  to  the  house.  Lights  appeared  mysteriously,  there  were 
sounds  of  movement  upstairs  and  in  the  kitchen  and,  by  the 
time  the  car  was  lodged  in  a  stable  and  the  luggage  carried 
into  the  house,  Sonia  found  herself  seated  at  a  meal  of  ham 
and  eggs  washed  down  with  draughts  of  dark  Munich  beer. 
The  food  gradually  restored  her  good  temper,  and  she  be- 
came disposed  to  treat  their  break-down  as  a  new  and  rather 
amusing  experience:  Webster,  however,  remained  silent, 
when  he  was  not  apologetic,  and  seemed  nervous  and 
unsettled. 

"D'you  mind  being  left  alone  with  me  like  this  ?"  he  asked. 
"You  know,  it  might  have  happened  to  either  of  the  other 
cars." 

"I'd  sooner  be  with  you  than  with  Lord  Pennington  or 
Sir  Adolf,"  she  admitted. 

"If  you  don't  mind,  you  can  bet  7  don't,"  he  answered, 
with  a  gleam  of  excitement  in  his  dull  eyes. 

"It's  rather  a  joke,"  she  went  on,  looking  round  the  old- 
fashioned,  heavily-timbered  room;  and  then  warningly — 
"Provided  it  isn't  repeated." 

"/  shan't  say  anything,"  he  promised. 

Sonia  found  that  it  was  one  thing  for  her  to  treat  their 
misadventure  as  a  joke  and  quite  another  to  be  exchanging 
the  language  of  conspiracy  with  him. 

"That'll  do,  Fatty,"  she  said.  "And  it  wasn't  what  I 
meant." 

Webster's  eyes  dulled  at  the  rebuke. 

"No  offence,"  he  murmured  indistinctly.    "May  I  smoke  ?" 

"You  may  do  whatever  you  like.    I'm  going  to  bed." 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  369 

He  opened  a  cigar-case  and  crossed  to  the  fireplace  in 
search  of  matches. 

"I'm  afraid  you'll  find  the  accommodation  rather  limited," 
he  remarked,  with  his  face  turned  away  from  her. 

"I  don't  expect  the  Ritz  in  a  village  of  six  houses,"  she 
answered. 

"There's  only  one  room." 

Sonia  sat  up  very  erect  in  her  chair;  her  breath  came 
and  went  quickly  and  all  her  pulses  seemed  to  be  throbbing. 

"Are  you  suggesting  I  should  toss  you  for  it?"  she  asked, 
with  a  flurried  laugh. 

He  turned  half  round  and  regarded  her  out  of  the  corner 
of  one  eye. 

"No  need,  is  there?"  he  mumbled. 

Sonia  jumped  up  hastily. 

"Well,  then,  I'll  take  possession,"  she  said.  "You  finish 
your  cigar  in  peace ;  the  landlord'll  show  me  the  way." 

She  hurried  into  the  hall  and  rapped  on  a  table  till  the 
proprietor  appeared.  He  asked  some  question  in  German, 
but  she  could  only  shake  her  head  and  point  up  the  stairs. 
Her  meaning  must  have  been  clear,  for  he  nodded  and  led 
the  way  with  a  lighted  candle  in  his  hand.  There  were  two 
doors  at  the  head  of  the  stairs,  and  he  opened  the  first. 
Looking  over  his  shoulder,  Sonia  saw  a  bed  without  sheets 
or  pillow-cases,  and  a  jug  standing  upside  down  in  the  basin. 
The  landlord  closed  the  door  with  a  muttered  "Nein"  and 
opened  the  one  opposite.  It  was  a  room  of  the  same  size 
and  character,  but  there  were  sheets  on  the  bed  and  hot- 
water  cans  by  the  wash-hand  stand.  Two  cabin  trunks  stood 
side  by  side  under  the  window,  their  straps  unloosed  and  hang- 
ing to  the  floor. 

Sonia  thanked  the  landlord  and  bade  him  good  night. 
Left  to  herself,  she  inspected  the  lock,  which  seemed  in  order, 
removed  her  coat  and  hat — and  tried  to  lift  down  Webster's 
trunk  and  drag  it  across  the  room.  Her  hand  slipped  as  she 
tilted  it  off  the  chair,  and  there  was  a  heavy  thud,  which 
reverberated  through  the  silent  house.  She  paused  and  lis- 


370  SONIA 

tened.     There  was  a  footstep  on  the  stairs  and  a  subdued 
tapping  at  the  door ;  then  her  name  was  called. 

"You  can  come  in,  Fatty,"  she  answered. 

He  entered  quickly,  yet  with  embarrassment,  and  stood  at 
the  door,  smiling  lop-sidedly. 

"You're  a  bit  of  a  liar,  aren't  you?"  she  suggested,  as  she 
bent  once  more  over  the  trunk. 

"Here,  let  me  help!"  he  said,  coming  foward  and  seizing 
the  handle.  "Where  d'you  want  this  put?" 

"In  the  next  room — the  room  you're  going  to  sleep  in. 
Hurry  up!" 

Webster  straightened  his  back  and  looked  at  her 
reproachfully. 

"I  say ! — Sonia !"  he  protested. 

His  mouth  seemed  suddenly  to  have  taken  on  a  new 
flabbiness  of  outline. 

"Hurry  up,  Fatty,"  she  repeated,  "and  don't  look  so  down 
on  your  luck.  You've  a  lot  to  be  thankful  for.  I've  two 
brothers,  and  if  either  of  them  were  in  this  house  he'd  be 
taking  the  skin  off  your  back  in  strips.  Clear  the  box  out  and 
then  come  back  for  your  suitcase." 

Webster  obeyed  her  with  docile  humility. 

"Now  then,"  she  went  on,  when  he  returned,  "one  or 
two  questions,  Fatty.  There's  nothing  wrong  with  your 
car,  is  there?  And  never  was?  This  is  all  a  little  plot  be- 
tween you  and  your  man.  I  thought  so.  Why  ?" 

He  smiled — and  avoided  her  eyes. 

"It  was  rather  a  joke.    You  said  so." 

"But  not  to  be  carried  too  far.     How  old  am  I,  Fatty? 
Well,  I'll  tell  you.     Twenty-eight.     And  I've  knocked  about 
a  bit.    D'you  think  I  go  in  for  jokes  of  that  kind?"    He  made 
no  answer.    "Well,  as  it  happens,  I  don't.    And  if  I  did — 
Tell  me  candidly,  Fatty,  do  you  think  I  should  choose  you?" 

She  stood  watching  him  with  an  expression  of  such  con- 
tempt that  the  worm  turned  in  spite  of  himself. 

"Then  why  the  devil  did  you  go  on  as  you've  been  doing 
the  last  wefek?"  he  demanded,  looking  up  and  flushing  under 
her  gaze. 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  371 

"What  have  I  done?" 

"You've  led  me  on — the  whole  way." 

"You?"  She  laughed  and  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders. 
"Go  to  bed,  Fat  Boy,  and  we'll  hope  you'll  wake  up  sane." 

The  touch  of  her  hands  seemed  to  fire  him. 

"This  is  my  joke!"  he  exclaimed,  catching  her  round  the 
waist  with  one  arm  and  pressing  her  head  forward  with  the 
other  till  their  lips  met.  "What  are  you  afraid  of,  Sonia?" 
he  whispered,  as  she  struggled  to  break  free  from  his  arms. 
"No  one'll  ever  know.  .  .  .  My  God,  you've  nearly  blinded 
me !" 

He  loosed  her  with  a  shrill  cry  of  pain  and  staggered 
back,  holding  both  hands  to  an  eye  that  she  had  all  but  driven 
through  its  socket  with  the  pressure  of  her  thumb. 

"That'll  teach  you !"  she  panted.  "Get  out,  you  little  cur ! 
Get  out,  I  say,  and  let  me  never  see  your  face  again !  Get 
out !  Get  out ! !" 

He  stumbled  from  the  room,  and  she  slammed  and  bolted 
the  door  behind  him.  Then  she  flung  herself  on  the  bed  with 
one  hand  over  her  mouth,  sobbing,  "To  be  kissed  by  that 
brute!  Oh,  you  devil,  you  devil!" 

in 

The  following  morning  Sonia  set  herself  to  escape  from 
a  village  whose  name  was  unknown  to  her  to  a  destination 
on  which  she  was  not  yet  decided,  with  the  aid  of  three 
pounds  in  English  money  and  an  entire  ignorance  of  the 
German  language. 

During  the  night  three  or  four  dominant  ideas  had 
crystallized  in  her  mind:  she  must  get  away  from  Webster; 
she  could  hardly  face  the  rest  of  the  party  and  their  inevitable 
questions;  it  was  necessary  to  wait  somewhere  within  the 
fare-radius  of  her  money  while  she  telegraphed  for  more. 
During  breakfast  she  summoned  the  landlord  and  repeated 
"Bayreuth.  Train.  Me,"  with  many  gesticulations,  until  he 
left  off  scratching  his  head  and  harnessed  a  country  cart  to 
drive  her  to  a  station  five  miles  away. 


372  SONIA 

After  that  there  was  no  difficulty  in  reaching  Bayreuth, 
where  she  was  made  welcome  at  her  former  hotel.  She 
telegraphed  home  for  money  and  only  left  at  the  end  of  two 
days,  when  instead  of  the  money  she  received  a  wire  from 
Sir  Adolf  Erckmann  asking  if  she  were  still  in  Bayreuth  and 
where  he  was  to  meet  her.  The  manager  of  the  hotel  paid 
her  fare  to  Niirnberg,  where  she  invented  friends  to  send 
her  home,  and  in  the  meantime  telegraphed  again  to  her 
father. 

This  time  she  gave  Innspruck  as  her  next  address:  from 
Bayreuth  she  had  gone  north  through  the  midst  of  mobilizing 
troops  and  fleeing  visitors,  and  it  became  clear  that,  if  she 
waited  long,  her  only  chance  of  escape  would  be  to  turn 
south  on  her  own  tracks  and  cross  through  Austria  into 
Italy.  The  manager  of  the  Niirnberg  hotel  proved  another 
friend,  and  with  the  money  lent  her  by  him  she  made  her 
way  over  the  frontier  and  resigned  herself  to  waiting  in 
Innspruck  till  her  unaccountable  father  vouchsafed  some 
reply  to  her  telegrams. 

She  was  still  at  her  hotel  when  war  was  declared.  The 
city  police  called  and  demanded  a  passport  which  she  did 
not  possess ;  they  inspected  her  luggage  and  removed  all 
books  and  papers;  finally  she  was  ordered  to  report  herself 
twice  daily  at  the  Town  Hall,  to  remain  in  her  hotel  from 
eight  at  night  till  ten  next  morning  and  in  no  circumstances — 
on  pain  of  death — to  venture  outside  the  city  boundaries. 
It  was  too  early  as  yet  to  say  whether  more  stringent  meas- 
ures would  be  necessary:  when  her  story  had  been  checked, 
it  might  be  possible  to  release  her  if  no  discrepancy  were 
discovered  in  it:  if  she  had  any  responsible  friends  or  rela- 
tions in  Innspruck  or  the  surrounding  country,  much  time 
and  trouble  might  be  saved  by  getting  them  to  attest  her 
identity  and  bona  fides.  The  interview  was  conducted  with 
every  mark  of  courtesy.  With  a  sinking  heart  Sonia  settled 
down  to  wait — in  a  hostile  country,  without  money  or  friends, 
till  the  end  of  an  endless  war. 

Her  treatment  for  the  first  day  or  two  was  sympathetic. 
The  hotel  manager  explained  that  he  had  no  quarrel  with  the 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  373 

English,  who  were  among  his  best  customers :  it  would  indeed 
be  a  tragedy  if  they  and  the  Austrians  met  and  killed  each 
other  in  battle:  possibly  if  England  confined  herself  to  a 
naval  war  .  .  .  He  grew  less  suave  when  it  became  known 
that  troops  were  being  poured  across  the  Channel  into  France, 
and  in  her  morning  and  evening  walks  to  the  Town  Hall 
Sonia  found  herself  greeted  with  menacing  and  contemptuous 
murmurs. 

At  the  end  of  the  week  the  public  spirit  had  changed  to 
a  note  of  jubilant  exultation.  Her  waiter,  under  the  eyes  of 
the  manager  and  unchecked  by  word  or  sign,  would  hand  her 
copies  of  the  "Kolnische  Zeitung"  or  "Neue  Freie  Presse"  at 
luncheon,  with  a  triumphant  ringer  to  the  heavy  headlimes 
and  a  word  or  two  of  translation  thrown  out  between  the 
courses. 

"Paris  one  week — one,"  he  would  say,  "zen  Calais,  zen 
London.  London  in  dree  week.  Belgrade  next  week.  And 
zen  Warsaw.  Warsaw  in  one  months  from  now.  See,  it  is 
all  here,  all.  Yes.  Ze  war  will  be  all  over  in  one  months." 

Sonia  attempted  no  reply.  For  ten  days  she  spoke  no 
word  save  to  repeat  her  name  night  and  morning  to  an  officer 
of  police  and  after  the  first  week  only  ventured  outside  the 
hotel  to  report  herself  at  the  Town  Hall.  She  was  waiting 
her  turn  one  afternoon  in  the  now  familiar  queue  when  the 
Chief  of  Police  summoned  her  into  his  room  and  presented 
her  with  a  letter:  the  envelope  had  been  opened  and  bore 
some  initials  and  a  date  in  blue  pencil  on  the  flap : 

"DEAR  Miss  DAINTON," — it  ran — "I  wonder  if  you  re- 
member me  and  the  visit  I  gave  myself  the  pleasure  of 
paying  you  and  your  father  when  I  was  over  from  the  States 
a  year  or  two  back?  I  am  in  this  city  for  a  day  or  two  on 
business  in  connection  with  some  oil-wells  in  which  my  firm 
is * interested.  I  thought — and  I  sincerely  hope  I  was  not 
mistaken — that  I  caught  sight  of  you  as  I  drove  from  the 
depot  to  the  Imperial  (where  I  am  staying).  I  am  sending 
this  by  hand  to  every  hotel  in  the  town  on  the  off  chance  of 
finding  you.  If  it  really  was  you,  I  trust  you  will  grant  me 


374  SONIA 

permission  to  call  on  you,  and  perhaps  you  will  give  me  the 
pleasure  of  your  company  at  luncheon  or  dinner  before  I  go 
on  into  Italy. — Believe  me  to  be,  dear  Miss  Dainton,  very 
truly  yours,  JAS.  MORRIS." 

Sonia  read  the  letter  under  the  vigilant  scrutiny  of  the 
Chief  of  Police.  The  stilted  phrasing  was  as  unfamiliar  as 
the  name,  but  the  neat,  precise  writing,  small  and  regular 
as  a  monkish  manuscript,  was  the  writing  of  O'Rane. 

"You  are  acquainted  with  this  Mr.  Morris?"  asked  the 
Chief  of  Police. 

"I — I've  met  him  once,"  stammered  Sonia,  "some  years 
ago." 

"He  knows  you?  Well  enough  to  identify  you?  I  have 
asked  him  to  attend  here  this  afternoon.  Be  good  enough  to 
be  seated." 

Sonia  walked  uncertainly  to  a  chair  and  sat  with  thumping 
heart  while  the  Chief  of  Police  went  on  with  his  writing. 
Five,  ten  and  fifteen  minutes  passed:  there  was  no  sign  of 
O'Rane,  and  she  felt  herself  growing  desperate  under  the 
suspense.  Then  the  door  opened,  and  he  was  ushered  in. 

"Guess  you're  the  Chief  of  Police,"  he  hazarded,  stretch- 
ing out  his  hand  and  not  noticing  the  corner  in  which  Sonia 
was  sitting.  "Pleased  to  meet  you,  sir.  I  got  your  note. 
What's  your  trouble  anyway?" 

The  Chief  of  Police  presented  him  with  his  own  letter 
and  put  a  question  in  German. 

"Say,  I  don't  use  German,"  O'Rane  answered.  "French 
is  the  best  I  can  manage.  Why,  that's  uncommon  like  my 
fist!  What  way  d'you  come  to  have  it?" 

It  was  explained  that  Miss  Dainton  was  under  police  su- 
pervision and  that  any  letters  were  liable  to  be  opened  and 
read. 

"Gee!  What's  she  been  doing?"  asked  O'Rane.  "Oh,  I 
forgot!  This  blamed  war.  Yes.  I  reckon  she's  a  prisoner. 
And  I  wanted  her  to  dine  with  me." 

"Miss  Dainton  is  in  the  room,"  said  the  Chief  of  Police, 
and  O'Rane  turned  with  a  start  of  surprise.  "It  was  hoped 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  375 

you  might  be  able  to  verify  the  particulars  she  has  given 
about  herself." 

Sonia  rose  from  her  chair  and  came  forward,  with  a  feel- 
ing that  every  movement  was  betraying  her  and  that  the 
Chief  of  Police  saw  through  the  whole  piece  of  play-acting 
and  enly  waited  an  opportunity  to  break  in  and  expose  the 
masquerading  American.  O'Rane  eyed  her  with  superb  de- 
liberation. 

"It's  Miss  Dainton,  sure,"  he  said,  with  a  bow.  "Pleased 
to  meet  you,  Miss  Dainton.  Now,  sir,  what's  the  piece  I'm 
to  say?" 

The  Chief  of  Police  extracted  a  foolscap  sheet  from  his 
table-drawer. 

"Perhaps  you  can  check  the  lady's  statements,"  he  said. 
"We  only  keep  her  till  someone  gives  us  guarantees  of  her 
good  faith." 

O'Rane  was  affected  with  sudden  scruples. 

"Guess  you'd  better  find  someone  that  knows  her  a  bit 
better,"  he  suggested.  "I  met  her  folk  often  enough,  but 
I've  not  seen  her  for  years." 

His  hand  moved  towards  his  hat  as  though  the  last  word 
had  been  said,  but  the  more  he  strove  to  avoid  responsibility 
the  more  it  was  pressed  upon  him. 

"Quite  formal  questions,"  the  Chief  of  Police  kept  re- 
peating; but  O'Rane  continued  to  excuse  himself. 

"See  here,"  he  explained.  "It's  God  knows  how  many 
years  since  I  met  her.  I  wrote  that  letter  'cos  I've  known  her 
father  since  I  was  a  boy  and  I  wanted  to  do  the  civil  to  his 
daughter.  This  war's  an  international  proposition,  and  we 
Americans  aren't  backing  either  side.  If  you  let  her  go  on 
my  evidence,  maybe  you'll  regret  it  and  start  getting  off 
protests  to  my  Government.  And,  if  you  keep  her  here,  I 
shall  be  up  against  her  folk  and  all  the  everlasting  State 
Departments  of  Great  Britain.  Guess  I'd  sooner  be  quit  of 
the  proposition  right  now." 

"We  will  take  all  responsibility,"  urged  the  Chief  of 
Police ;  and  O'Rane  began  to  yield  with  a  bad  grace.  "They 
are  just  formal  questions.  ..." 


376  SONIA 

For  five  minutes  O'Rane  reluctantly  allowed  a  minimum 
of  uncompromising  information  to  be  corkscrewed  out  of 
him.  Sonia's  Christian  name,  surname  and  address  were 
confirmed,  but  he  knew  nothing  of  her  age  and  the  reason  for 
her  presence  in  Austria.  On  the  subject  of  her  parents  he 
was  slightly  more  communicative,  but  Sir  Roger  Dainton, 
Baronet  (or  Knight — O'Rane  knew  little  of  these  dime  dis- 
tinctions among,  the  British  aristocracy)  was  only  known  to 
fame  as  the  director  of  a  company  which  his  firm  had  the 
honour  to  supply  with  Carinthian  oil.  That  was  all  he  could 
say,  and  more  than  he  cared  to  take  the  responsibility  of 
saying.  He  was,  of  course,  happy  to  be  of  assistance  to 
either  party,  provided  the  strict  neutrality  of  his  country 
were  maintained,  and  would  hold  himself  at  the  disposal  of 
Miss  Dainton  or  of  the  police  authorities  until  his  departure 
for  Italy  the  following  day.  Perhaps  in  return  the  Chief  of 
Police  would  tell  him  if  any  difficulties  were  to  be  anticipated 
in  crossing  the  frontier.  .  .  . 

The  next  morning  a  clerk  from  the  police  head-quarters 
called  at  the  Imperial  Hotel.  O'Rane  was  seated  in  shirt- 
sleeves in  his  private  room,  with  a  green  cigar  jutting  out 
of  his  mouth  and  the  table  in  front  of  him  littered  with  speci- 
fications and  oil-prices.  The  clerk  announced  that  there 
seemed  no  reason  to  detain  Miss  Dainton  any  longer,  but 
she  had  exhausted  her  money  and  could  hardly  travel  back 
to  England  without  assistance. 

"Guess  that  young  woman  regards  me  as  a  pocket-size 
providence,"  observed  O'Rane  impatiently.  "I'm  not  through 
with  my  mail  yet.  What's  the  damage  anyway?  No,  figure 
it  out  in  dollars,  I've  no  use  for  your  everlasting  krones.  Or 
see  here,  you  freeze  on  to  these  bills  and  fix  things  at  the 
hotel,  and,  if  Miss  Dainton  can  get  her  baggage  to  the  depot* 
by  four  o'clock,  I'll  take  her  slick  through  to  Genoa  and  put 
her  on  a  packet  there.  It's  no  great  way  out  of  my  road.  I 
guess  your  Chief  will  fix  her  papers  for  her.  That  all? 
Then  I'll  finish  off  my  mail." 

At  a  quarter  to  four  he  met  Sonia  at  the  station  and 
greeted  her  with  the  words,  "Guess  you  don't  give  a  row  of 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  377 

beans  how  soon  you're  quit  of  this  township,  Miss  Dainton." 
As  they  crossed  the  frontier  he  threw  his  cigar  out  of  the 

window  and  began  filling  a  pipe. 

"Now,  young  lady,  perhaps  you'll  explain  yourself,"  he 

said. 

IV 

In  what  follows  I  have  for  authority  the  account  of 
O'Rane,  given  hurriedly  and  with  unconcentrated  mind,  and 
that  of  Sonia,  acidulated  with  the  bitterness  of  a  pampered 
woman  suddenly  exposed  to  a  torrent  of  unexpected  insult. 
Sonia's  conscience,  if  she  have  one,  must  have  been  disturbed 
when  her  deliverance  came  at  the  hands  of  a  man  whom 
her  greatest  adulators  could  hardly  say  she  had  treated  well. 
She  was  prepared  to  make  acknowledgement.  O'Rane,  how- 
ever, gave  her  no  opportunity. 

"Come  along !"  he  said,  slapping  a  cane  against  his  leg. 

"David  .  .   .   !"  she  exclaimed  in  astonishment  at  his  tone. 

His  brows  contracted  and  he  became  very  still. 

"Look  here,  Sonia,"  he  said.  "Let's  clear  away  romance 
and  come  to  grips.  Possibly  you  don't  know  that,  if  I'd  been 
caught  on  Austrian  territory,  I  should  have  been  shot " 

"I  do.    It's  just  that  ..." 

"Don't  interrupt!  There's  a  war  on,  and  your  father's 
been  mobilized,  so  that  I  came  in  his  place.  From  now  until 
we  get  back  to  England  you  will  obey  whatever  orders  I 
choose  to  give  you.  First  of  all,  what's  the  latest  game 
you've  been  up  to?" 

Sonia  stared  at  him  in  amazement.  He  was  lying  negli- 
gently back  in  his  corner  with  his  feet  stretched  out  on  the 
seat,  drawling  his  words  in  a  tone  that  a  half-caste  might 
use  to  a  dog.  She  kept  her  lips  tightly  shut  until  he  rapped 
the  window  menacingly  with  his  knuckles. 

"If  you  talk  to  me  like  that,  David  ..."  she  began. 

He  laughed  derisively  and  watched  her  angry,  flushed  face 
until  she  turned  and  looked  out  of  the  window  to  avoid  his 
eyes. 

No  other  word  was  spoken.    As  the  train  wound  its  way 


378  SONIA 

in  and  out  of  the  mountains,  afternoon  changed  to  evening, 
and  the  low-flung  last  shaft  of  sunlight  showed  her  that 
O'Rane's  eyes  were  closed  and  his  lips  smiling.  Sonia  be- 
came suddenly  frightened,  as  though  he  were  laughing  at  her 
in  his  sleep.  Turning  away,  she  closed  her  own  eyes,  but 
the  stifling  August  heat  parched  her  mouth  and  set  the  skin 
of  her  body  pricking. 

At  a  wayside  station  an  old  woman  hobbled  to  the  window 
with  a  basket  of  grapes.  Sonia  felt  in  her  purse  and  found 
it  empty.  After  a  moment's  uneasy  hesitation,  she  took  a 
bunch  with  one  hand  and  pointed  to  O'Rane  with  the  other. 
The  old  woman  nodded  smilingly  and  tapped  him  gently  on 
the  shoulder.  Still  smiling  he  awoke,  glanced  round  and 
spoke  a  few  words  in  Italian :  Sonia  saw  the  old  woman  argue 
for  a  moment  unavailingly,  then  shrug  her  shoulders  and  ex- 
tend a  skinny  brown  hand  for  the  return  of  the  grapes. 

"No,  no !    They're  mine !    I  want  them !"  Sonia  cried. 

The  old  woman  gesticulated  violently  and  touched 
O'Rane's  arm  for  support  against  his  countrywoman. 

"Have  you  paid  for  them?"  he  asked. 

Sonia  glared  at  him  through  a  mist  of  tears,  bit  her  lip  and 
threw  the  grapes  back  into  the  basket.  O'Rane  felt  in  his 
pocket  and  produced  a  lira,  which  he  gave  to  the  old  woman 
as  the  train  moved  away  from  the  station.  She  hurried  pain- 
fully alongside  with  both  hands  full  of  the  largest  bunches, 
but  he  only  shook  his  head  and  pulled  the  window  up.  The 
carriage  was  suddenly  darkened  as  they  entered  a  tunnel ;  on 
shooting  into  daylight  the  other  side,  he  saw  that  Sonia's 
face  was  hidden  and  her  shoulders  heaving.  O'Rane  knocked 
out  his  pipe  and  composed  himself  for  sleep. 

Night  had  fallen  before  she  spoke  again. 

"You  must  get  me  something  to  eat,  David,"  she  said. 
"I'm  simply  sick  for  want  of  food." 

He  yawned  slightly  and  filled  another  pipe. 

"I'm  starving,"  she  went  on  hysterically.  "I've  had  noth- 
ing since  breakfast." 

"Nor  have  I,  if  it  comes  to  that,"  he  answered,  breaking 
his  long  silence. 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  379 

"You  may  be  different,"  she  replied,  covering  her  eyes 
with  her  hand.  "You  forget  what  I've  been  through." 

"You  forget  I  am  still  waiting  to  hear,"  he  answered 
politely. 

Sonia  relapsed  into  silence  for  a  few  moments,  but  the 
sight  of  O'Rane  lighting  his  pipe  and  settling  comfortably 
into  his  corner  was  too  much  for  her. 

"I  must  have  food,"  she  exclaimed.  "I'll  tell  you,  if  you'll 
give  me  something  to  eat." 

"You'll  tell  me  unconditionally,"  O'Rane  answered 
lazily. 

A  wave  of  passion  swept  over  her.  "You  brute!"  she 
gasped,  springing  to  her  feet.  "You  utter  brute!  I'll  never 
tell  you  as  long  as  I  live!"  O'Rane  took  a  second  match 
to  his  pipe,  blew  it  out  and  threw  it  under  the  seat.  "You 
sit  there  smoking ' 

"I'll  stop  if  you  like,  and  we'll  run  level.  I  warn  you 
that  I  can  hold  out  for  four  days  without  food  and  two  or 
three  without  drink." 

The  anger  passed  as  suddenly  as  it  had  come,  and  she 
dropped  back  on  to  the  seat. 

"I  think  you  probably  get  fainter  if  you  wear  your  nerves 
out,"  he  remarked  disinterestedly. 

"I'd  kill  you  if  I  could !"  she  muttered  between  her  teeth. 

An  hour  later  he  was  roused  by  a  slight  choking  cry  and 
looked  up  to  find  Sonia  sitting  huddled  in  a  heap,  with  her 
head  fallen  forward  on  her  chest  and  her  arms  hanging  limply 
to  her  sides.  Pulling  out  his  watch,  he  looked  at  her  for  a 
few  moments,  and  then  observed: 

"You  must  relax  all  your  muscles  for  a  pukka  faint, 
not  only  the  neck  and  arms."  She  made  no  movement.  "I 
used  to  sham  faint  on  trigonometry  afternoons  at  school," 
he  went  on,  with  a  yawn.  "Go  flop  on  the  floor  and  make 
Greenbank  himself  carry  me  out.  I  assure  you  it's  not  done 
like  that,  Sonia." 

The  limp  arms  gradually  stiffened,  and  she  looked  round 
with  half-opened  eyes.  "Where  am  I  ?" 

"Some  few  hours  from  Genoa,  I  should  think,"  he  an- 


380  SONIA 

swered  cheerfully.    "I've  not  booked  beyond  Milan,  so  as  to 
have  complete  liberty  of  action." 

She  closed  her  eyes  and  lay  back.  "You're  killing  me, 
David,"  she  moaned. 

He  took  a  paper-backed  novel  out  of  his  pocket  and  began 
to  read  it  without  troubling  to  answer. 

The  capitulation  took  place  four  hours  later,  when  the 
dawn  came  stealing  in  at  the  window  and  illumined  the  dusty 
carriage  with  its  cold  grey  light.  Sonia  raised  a  tear-stained 
face,  and  with  swollen,  parched  lips  begged  for  mercy. 
O'Rane  lifted  his  suitcase  from  the  rack  and  slowly  un- 
locked it. 

"This  is  unconditional?"  he  asked. 

She  nodded. 

"You  will  do  as  I  tell  you  as  long  as  I  find  it  worth  while 
to  give  you  orders?" 

"Don't  make  me  do  anything  horrid !" 

He  locked  the  suitcase  and  replaced  it  in  the  rack.  Sonia 
looked  at  him  for  a  moment  without  understanding  and  then 
burst  into  convulsive  weeping. 

"I  can't  bear  it !  I  can't  bear  it  any  longer !"  she  sobbed. 
"You're  torturing  me !  I'll  do  -whatever  you  want !" 

O'Rane  smiled  and  lifted  down  the  case  once  more. 

"I  haven't  laid  a  finger  on  you,"  he  remarked  contemptu- 
ously. "I  haven't  spoken  a  dozen  sentences.  You've  just 
had  eighteen  hours  without  food  and  eleven  in  my  agree- 
able company.  And  you're  broken!  And  you  thought  to 
measure  wills  with  me !  Have  some  food — and  a  drink.  It's 
weak  brandy  and  water.  Not  too  much  or  your  pride'll  get 
the  better  of  you,  to  say  nothing  of  indigestion." 

He  handed  her  bread  and  a  wing  of  chicken,  which  she 
ate  ravenously  in  her  fingers ;  then  hard-boiled  eggs  and  a 
piece  of  cheese. 

"Say  'Thank  you,' "  he  commanded  at  the  end.  She 
murmured  something  inaudible.  "Clearly!"  She  repeated 
the  words.  "That's  better.  Now  I'll  start  my  breakfast, 
and  you  shall  entertain  me  by  telling  the  full  and  true  ac- 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  381 

count  of  your  latest  scrape.  And  after  that  I'll  tell  you  what 
I'm  going  to  do  with  you.  Fire  away." 

He  began  a  leisurely,  nonchalant  meal,  but  Sonia  made 
no  sound. 

"I'm  waiting,"  he  was  prompt  to  remind  her. 

She  sat  with  folded  arms,  bidding  him  a  silent  defiance. 

"Sonia,  I'm  not  disobeyed — much,"  he  told  her  very 
quietly. 

Her  brave  attempt  to  look  unwaveringly  into  his  pur- 
poseful black  eyes  broke  down  precipitately. 

"I'll  tell  you!"  she  promised  breathlessly,  and,  as  he  re- 
sumed his  breakfast,  smiling,  "You  can  see  how  you  like  it, 
you  brute !" 

I  have  often  thought  over  the  story  she  told  him  without 
ever  quite  understanding  its  spirit.  There  was  no  longer  the 
old  endeavor  to  shock  for  the  sake  of  shocking,  but  some- 
thing more  angry  and  bitter,  as  though  she  were  matching 
his  account  of  the  risk  he  had  undergone  in  reaching  her  by 
proving  him  a  fool  for  his  pains.  The  effect  on  his  mind  was 
shown  in  his  brief,  acid  comment  at  the  end: 

"And  men  have  been  ready  to  spoil  their  lives  for  you!" 

"I  didn't  think  you'd  like  it  when  you  got  it,"  she 
taunted. 

O'Rane  looked  wistfully  out  of  the  window. 

"And  I've  dreamed  of  you  in  five  continents,"  he  mur- 
mured half  to  himself.  "Lying  out  under  the  stars  in  Mex- 
ico, just  whispering  your  name  in  very  hunger.  .  .  .  Ever 
since  I  was  a  boy  at  Oxford,  and  you  promised  .  .  .  you 
promised  ..." 

"You've  waited  patiently  for  your  revenge,  David." 

"You  weren't  taking  risks  even  then,"  he  retorted. 
"Toujours  le  grand  jeu.  I  could  always  get  men  to  trust 
me  .  .  .  put  their  lives  in  my  hand.  They  knew  I  shouldn't 
let  them  down,  but  you  could  never  stand  your  soul  being 
seen  naked  ..." 

She  broke  in  violently  on  his  meditation. 

"Why  did  you  ever  come  here?"  she  demanded. 

"Because  I've  lived  in  a  world  of  dreams,  Sonia.     I've 


382  SONIA 

been  poor  and  rich  and  poor  again — that  made  no  difference — 
but  I  fancied  that  one  day  you  would  need  me " 

"You've  insulted  me  ...  !"  she  interrupted. 

He  laid  his  hand  gently  on  her  knee. 

"If  anyone  had  had  the  courage  ten  years  ago  to  tell  you 
what  I've  told  you  to-day,  instead  of  spoiling  you,  petting 
you,  filling  your  head  with  the  idea  that  the  whole  world  re- 
volved round  you " 

"Yet — you  came  out  here !"  she  put  in  mockingly, 

brushing  his  hand  disdainfully  away. 

"There's  a  war  on,  Sonia,"  he  answered.  "Your  old 
world's  been  blotted  out.  You'll  find  everything  changed 
when  you  get  back,  and  no  niche  for  you  to  fill.  Everything 
we  value  or  love  will  have  to  be  sacrificed,  and  you've  never 
sacrificed  anything  but  your  friends.  I  came  out  here  because 
I  hoped  the  war  would  have  sobered  you.  It  might  have 
been  the  making  of  you.  It  might  have  made  a  woman  of 
you." 

Nine  days  later  they  parted  at  Paddington.  From  Genoa 
they  had  taken  an  Italian  boat  to  Marseilles,  changed  to  a 
P.  &  O.  and  landed  at  Plymouth.  Lady  Dainton  was  en- 
gaged in  turning  Crowley  Court  into  a  hospital,  and  at  Sir 
Roger's  request  I  met  Sonia,  gave  her  a  late  luncheon,  notified 
the  Foreign  Office  of  her  return  and  put  her  on  board  a 
Melton  train  at  Waterloo. 

She  was  communicative  with  the  volubility  of  an  aggrieved 
woman,  and  more  than  one  passer-by  on  the  platform  looked 
curiously  at  her  flushed  face  and  indignant  brown  eyes. 

"No,  I  decline  to  be  mixed  up  in  the  quarrel,"  I  told  her, 
when  she  invited  my  opinion  of  O'Rane. 

"Then  you  agree  with  him?" 

"I  have  no  views,  Sonia,"  I  said. 

"That's  nonsense!"  she  exclaimed.  "I've  told  you  what 
he  said,  and  it's  either  true  or  not  true."  Her  voice  suddenly 
softened  and  became  pleading.  "George,  I'm — I'm  not  like 
that." 

"I  will  not  discuss  you  with  yourself,"  I  said.  "Gener- 
ally speaking,  I  don't  understand  the  modern  Society  girl " 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  383 

"And  you  hate  her!"  Sonia  put  in. 

I  said  nothing. 

"Why?"  she  pursued. 

"Too  much  of  an  arriviste,"  I  hazarded.  "Too  much  on 
the  make,  too  keen  to  get  there." 

She  pondered  my  criticism  deliberately. 

"You  were  born  there,"  she  observed,  as  though  explain- 
ing a  distinction  I  ought  to  have  appreciated. 

"My  dear  Sonia,  a  bachelor  has  no  social  status,"  I  said. 
"Whether  he's  received  or  not  depends  on  the  possession  of 
respectable  dress-clothes." 

"Beryl  was  born  there,"  she  continued,  following  her  own 
line  of  thought.  "So  was  Violet,  or  Amy  Loring.  If  you're 
the  daughter  of  a  successful  brewer,  packed  off  to  London  to 
get  married " 

"This  is  morbid,"  I  interrupted,  looking  at  my  watch  to 
see  how  much  longer  we  were  to  be  kept  waiting. 

"That  little  cur  talked  as  if  it  were  my  fault!"  she  cried 
in  shrill  excitement. 

I  found  a  note  at  the  Admiralty  to  say  that  O'Rane  would 
be  grateful  for  a  bed  in  Princes  Gardens  as  the  Gray's  Inn 
rooms  had  been  let.  During  dinner  that  night  he  made  no 
mention  of  his  Austrian  expedition  and  seemed  only  inter- 
ested to  learn  how  the  war  had  progressed  in  his  absence. 
We  discussed  the  changes  in  the  War  Office  and  Cabinet, 
speculated  on  the  untried  Haldane  Expeditionary  Force  and 
came  back  eternally  to  the  reputed  infallibility  of  German 
arms.  No  man  alive  at  that  time  will  forget  his  thrill  on 
reading  that  the  massed  might  of  Germany  had  been  brought 
to  a  standstill  before  Liege.  The  engine  of  destruction  was 
so  perfect  that  a  single  pebble  might  seemingly  throw  it  out 
of  gear,  and  with  the  crude  optimism  of  those  early  days  we 
talked  of  the  Russians  hammering  at  the  gates  of  East  Prussia 
and  the  possibility  of  peace  by  Christmas. 

O'Rane,  unwontedly  taciturn  and  out  of  humour,  laughed 
scornfully. 

"A  five  months'  war  when  Germany  knows  that  if  she 
fails  she'll  sink  to  the  level  of  Spain?  We've  got  a  super- 


384  SONIA 

human  job.  Every  man  we  can  get.  ...  I  hope  you'll  for- 
give me,  sir,  I'm  treating  your  house  as  my  own  and  inviting 
a  few  men  for  a  recruiting  campaign " 

"Go  carefully,"  urged  Bertrand.  "I  suggested  you  for 
an  interpretership  in  France  or  Russia,  whichever  they 
wanted." 

"I  wonder  how  long  they'll  take  to  make  up  their  minds  ?" 
O'Rane  asked,  with  a  touch  of  impatience.  "I  applied  for  a 
commission  before  I  left  England.  I — I  can't  wait,  sir." 

"My  dear  boy  ...  !" 

"Oh,  I  know  it's  very  childish,  sir,"  O'Rane  answered, 
with  a  laugh.  "But  I'm  desperate." 

Bertrand,  who  knew  of  his  financial  troubles,  raised  his 
eyebrows  and  said  nothing.  The  next  evening  we  had  our 
informal  recruiting  committee-meeting  and  divided  the  home 
counties  into  twelve  districts,  pledging  each  member  to  gather 
in  five  hundred  recruits  within  a  week.  The  Government 
machinery  was  slow  to  gather  motion,  and  patriotism  and 
restlessness  combined  to  make  of  every  man  an  amateur 
Napoleon.  As  I  looked  round  my  uncle's  dining-room,  one 
feature  of  O'Rane's  committee  was  noticeable  as  illustrating 
a  simple  philosophy  he  had  held  in  boyhood.  On  his  right  sat 
Sinclair,  whose  adherence  had  been  won  more  than  fifteen 
years  ago  in  the  matter  of  a  forged  copy  of  Greek  Alcaics 
for  the  Shelton  Prize ;  on  his  left  I  recognized  Brent,  elected 
to  an  All  Souls'  Fellowship  shortly  after  O'Rane  had  retired 
from  the  contest ;  at  the  foot  of  the  table  was  James  Morris 
of  Ennismore  Gardens,  Mexico  City  Gaol  and  elsewhere. 
The  others  I  had  not  met  before,  but  their  sole  common 
characteristic  seemed  to  be  that  at  some  period  of  their  ca- 
reers David  O'Rane  had  made  himself  indispensable  to  them 
all. 

"I  want  a  week  of  your  undivided  time,"  said  the  Chair- 
man. "Each  one  will  have  a  district,  a  car  and  a  doctor. 
I  want  each  to  raise  five  hundred  men,  and  you'll  find  it 
easiest  to  borrow  a  system,  which  Mr.  Sinclair  can  explain  to 
you,  of  getting  hold  of  the  enthusiasts  and  making  each  one 
bring  in  another,  snowball  fashion.  You're  on  strong  ground 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  385 

if  you're  in  first  yourselves.  Is  there  anybody  here  who  won't 
help  me?" 

The  house — at  full  strength — went  into  committee.  With 
what  he  described  as  poetic  justice  and  I  preferred  to  call 
malice,  O'Rane  gave  me  the  town  of  Easterly,  which  is  known 
to  history  for  its  anti-Government  riots  in  the  South  African 
War  and  to  the  Disarmament  League  for  the  flattering  re- 
ception accorded  to  five  years  of  peace  propaganda.  As  I 
could  only  address  evening  meetings,  when  my  work  at  the 
Admiralty  was  over,  Bertrand  undertook  to  canvass  the  dis- 
trict by  day  in  such  time  as  he  could  spare  from  turning 
Princes  Gardens  into  a  hospital. 

"How  soon  do  we  start,  Raney?"  I  asked,  when  the  com- 
mittee was  dispersed,  and  we  were  walking  upstairs  to  bed. 

"To-morrow,"  he  answered.  "Five  hundred  multiplied 
by  twelve,  six  thousand.  Most  of  them  will  take  a  bullet  in 
their  brain ;  you  can't  begin  that  sort  of  thing  too  soon." 

"You're  in  a  cheerful  mood,"  I  observed. 

"If  I  could  get  out  to-morrow  .  .  .  !  Man,  I  know  the 
drill  from  A  to  Z,  I  was  under  fire  all  through  the  Balkan 
Wars  .  .  .  and  your  uncle,  in  the  kindness  of  his  heart,  talks 
about  interpreterships !  My  God!" 

"He  only  wanted  to  preserve  your  precious  young  life," 
I  said. 

"You  damned  fool,  d'you  think  I  want  my  life  preserved?" 
he  blazed  out,  with  such  passion  as  I  had  not  seen  in  his  face 
since  the  first  weeks  that  I  knew  him  at  Melton. 


A  recruiting  campaign  presents  sorry  studies  in  psychology. 
Easterly  was  the  only  ground  I  worked,  but  I  imagine  the 
Easterly  types  are  to  be  found  everywhere.  There  were 
hale,  open-air  men  who  enlisted  because  it  was  the  obvious 
thing  to  do,  over-age  men  who  struggled  to  circumvent  the 
doctor,  and  boys  who  rushed  forward  adventurous  and  un- 


386  SONIA 

heeding  as  they  would  have  rushed  to  a  race-meeting  or  polar 
expedition. 

Others  reflected  longer  and  advanced  more  slowly — men 
with  domestic  responsibilities  who  yet  appreciated  the  gravity 
of  what  was  at  stake ;  men  who  were  urged  on  by  speeches  or 
taunts ;  and  again,  and  with  pathetic  impetuosity,  boys  whose 
fathers  and  brothers  were  already  falling  in  the  tragic  glory 
of  the  Mons  retreat. 

Slower  still  came  the  self-conscious  men  who  could  never 
visualize  themselves  as  soldiers,  some  so  slowly  that  they  never 
reached  the  booth.  There  was  an  almost  articulate  struggle 
of  mind  with  those  who  had  mounted  socially  until  they 
affected  contempt  for  mere  privates  and  yet  saw  no  like- 
lihood of  securing  a  commission ;  yet  this  was  to  some  extent 
balanced  by  the  readiness  of  others  to  sink  in  the  social  scale. 
Many  a  clerk,  who  had  starved  to  preserve  black-coated 
gentility,  grasped  the  opportunity  of  abandoning  pretension 
and  a  semi  detached  villa.  "I'm  comfortable — for  the  first 
time  in  my  life,"  one  of  them  told  my  uncle.  And  there  was 
an  appreciable  minority  of  sons  with  excessive  mothers,  and 
husbands  with  too  persistent  wives,  crowding  to  the  Colours 
like  schoolboys  on  holiday. 

By  the  time  that  my  canvass  started  in  earnest,  the  cream 
had  been  skinned  from  the  district.  Lord  Kitchener's  magic 
name  and  the  alarm  of  the  great  retreat  had  attracted  the 
willing  fighters,  and  we  were  left  with  some  whose  imagination 
was  unstirred  and  others  who  frankly  opposed  our  efforts. 
My  first  meeting  was  strongly  reminiscent  of  old  political 
wrangles  in  the  Cranbourne  Division.  I  was  met  at  the  doors 
of  the  National  School  by  Kestrell,  the  secretary  of  the  East- 
erly Democratic  Union,  who  had  habitually  sat  on  my  plat- 
form and  moved  votes  of  thanks  when  I  discoursed  on  inter- 
national disarmament.  Some  years  earlier  he  had  abandoned 
an  assured  livelihood  to  organize  the  hotter-headed  section 
of  labour  in  the  town.  Throughout  the  week  he  preached  the 
General  Strike  and  on  Sundays  performed  the  office  of  Reader 
in  the  conventicle  of  a  microscopic  sect.  Frail  and  passionate, 
with  excited  gestures  and  the  eyes  of  a  fanatic,  I  always 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  387 

regarded  him  as  a  man  who  would  burn  or  be  burned  with 
almost  equal  serenity. 

"I'm  surprised  to  see  you  here,  Mr.  Oakleigh,"  he  re- 
marked, with  strong  disapproval  in  his  tones  as  he  shook 
hands. 

"I'm  afraid  we  can't  talk  about  the  federation  of  Europe 
till  we've  won  this  war,"  I  said. 

He  sniffed  contemptuously  and  walked  to  the  back  of  the 
hall,  where  he  opened  fire  with  extracts  from  my  speeches  and 
articles,  lovingly  culled  and  flatteringly  sandwiched  between 
those  of  the  Right  Honourable  Michael  Bendix,  one-time  self- 
styled  leader  of  pro-Boer  nonconformity,  later  the  chief  orna- 
ment of  the  "Little  Navy"  group,  later  still — in  the  first- 
days  of  August — the  Cabinet  champion  of  non-intervention, 
and  subsequently  a  fire-eating  Conscriptionist  and  parvenu 
War  Lord. 

Bertrand  and  I  laboured  unremittingly  for  the  first  four 
out  of  our  appointed  seven  days,  but  the  numbers  never  rose 
beyond  a  daily  average  of  fifty,  and  I  was  compelled  to  warn 
O'Rane  that  if  he  wanted  better  results  he  must  come  and 
lend  a  hand.  Two  evenings  later  he  appeared  with  Loring, 
scornful  and  charged  with  his  new  resentment  against  the 
world. 

"The  fellows  have  been  falling  over  each  other  in  my 
district,"  he  said.  "I  always  told  you  I  could  make  men 
follow  me." 

"Let's  have  an  ocular  demonstration  here,"  I  suggested. 

"You  get  up  and  do  your  turn,"  he  answered.  "I'll 
stampede  the  meeting  later  if  you  don't  catch  on." 

Our  meeting  was  held  in  Easterly  Market  Square  round  the 
steps  of  the  Cross  as  the  men  returned  from  work.  As  there 
were  two  new  speakers  present,  I  introduced  them  and  left 
Bertrand  to  prove  for  the  hundredth  time  that  the  war  had 
been  engineered  by  Germany  and  that  the  stakes  were  no  less 
than  the  whole  order  of  civilization  which  England  repre- 
sented. As  the  speech  began,  Kestrell  moved  to  the  foot  of 
the  steps  and  quoted  my  uncle's  earlier  assurances  that  Ger- 
many was  entirely  amicable:  when  it  was  over  he  invited 


388  SONIA 

the  audience  to  say  whether  the  German  working  man  had 
willed  the  war  and  what  the  English  labouring  classes  stood 
to  get  out  of  it. 

"What  I  says  is,  it  takes  two  to  make  a  quarrel,"  he 
proceeded,  thumping  a  clenched  fist  into  the  open  palm  of 
the  other  hand.  "  'Oo  done  it  'ere  ?  You  ?  Me  ?  I  don't 
think.  Was  it  Parliament  ?  Ask  these  gentlemen :  you've  got 
a  lord  'ere  and  two  members.  Of  course  the  workin'  man 
was  gettin'  uppish  with  'is  strikes  and  what  not,  but  that's 
jest  'is  pore  misguided  way.  A  bit  o'  martial  law  will  set 
that  right.  You  bin  given  King  and  Country  for  three  weeks 
— 'ard,  and  your  duty's  plain:  work  for  Capital  when  there's 
peace  and  fight  for  it  when  there's  war.  It  must  be  you  as 
fights,  'cause  there's  no  one  else.  An'  you'll  fight  so  that 
when  it's  over  you  can  come  back — if  you  'aven't  been  killed 
— and  find  everything  jest  as  it  was  before.  I  know  what 
war  is,  and  I  saw  our  chaps  when  they  came  back  from  fight- 
ing for  Capital  in  the  Transvaal.  You  won't  get  no  more  of 
this  blessed  country  by  fightin'  for  it,  and  you  couldn't  lose 
more  if  the  Germans  came  and  collared  the  lot.  Now  if 
some  of  these  lords  and  members  'ere  went  out  and  did  a  bit 
of  fighting  themselves " 

Loring  rose  swiftly  to  his  feet. 

"Of  the  three  'lords  and  members'  present,"  he  said,  "one 
is  considerably  over  military  age,  another  has  a  commission, 
the  third  has  applied  for  one." 

"And  'ow  soon  are  you  going  out  ?"  inquired  Kestrell. 

"As  soon  as  I  can  get  transferred  to  a  service  battalion." 

Kestrell  grimaced  knowingly. 

"Do  they  send  lords  out?"  he  inquired,  with  a  wink  to 
his  supporters. 

Loring,  who  had  been  spared  the  wit  and  urbanity  of  a 
contested  election,  turned  suddenly  white,  and  I,  remember- 
ing the  day  fifteen  years  before  when  the  news  of  his  father's 
death  in  the  Transvaal  reached  Oxford,  pulled  him  back  into 
his  seat  before  he  could  reply. 

O'Rane  yawned  and  pulled  his  hands  slowly  out  of  his 
pockets. 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  389 

"Dam*  dull  meeting,  George,"  he  observed.  "What's  the 
fellow's  name?  Kestrell?  Bet  you  I  enlist  him  within  seven 
minutes." 

"A  fiver  you  don't,"  I  whispered  back. 

He  rose  to  his  feet  and  slowly  swept  the  circle  of  faces 
with  his  eyes,  waiting  deliberately  to  let  the  graceful  debonair 
poise  of  his  body  be  seen.  The  crowd  watched  him  silently, 
as  a  music-hall  audience  awaits  the  development  of  a  new 
turn ;  but  he  seemed  indifferent  to  their  interest  and  appeared 
to  linger  for  a  yet  pro  founder  depth  of  silence.  Then  with  a 
quick  turn  of  the  head  he  faced  Kestrell. 

"Will  you  come  to  France  with  me?"  he  asked.  "I  am 
going  as  soon  as  possible,  because  the  men  there  who  are 
defending  us  and  our  women  are  heavily  outnumbered.  I 
don't  care  who  made  the  war,  but  I  do  care  about  my  friends 
being  killed.  You'll  probably  be  killed  if  you  come,  but  you'll 
have  done  your  best — just  as  you  would  if  a  dozen  hooligans 
knocked  down  a  friend  of  yours  and  jumped  on  him.  Will 
you  come?" 

Kestrell's  lips  parted,  but  before  he  could  speak  a  boy 
at  the  back  of  the  crowd  called  out : 

"I'll  come,  mister !" 

O'Rane  raised  his  hand  to  silence  the  interruption. 

"I  am  speaking  to  Mr.  Kestrell,"  he  said,  "he  knows 
what  war  is." 

"The  working  man  never  wanted  this  one,"  Kestrell  cried 
excitedly. 

"Nobody  in  England  wanted  it.  But  it's  upon  us,  and  the 
working  man  is  being  killed  like  everyone  else.  Don't  you 
care  to  help?" 

There  was  no  reply,  but  the  crowd  moved  restlessly. 
O'Rane  glanced  at  his  watch  and  picked  up  his  dustcoat  from 
the  seat  of  the  car. 

"There  are  two  lads  here,  sir,"  called  a  farmer  from  the 
left  of  the  circle. 

O'Rane  shook  his  head  and  thrust  his  arms  into  the  coat. 

"Unless  Mr.  Kestrell  comes  I  prefer  to  go  alone,"  he  said : 
and  then  to  my  uncle,  "Shall  we  get  back  sir?" 


390  SONIA 

The  farmer's  two  recruits  hurried  forward,  blushing  deeply 
as  the  eyes  of  the  meeting  turned  on  to  them. 

"You  don't  know  what  war  is,"  O'Rane  told  them.  "I — 
have  been  under  fire,  and,  like  Mr.  Kestrell,  I  do  know.  If 
every  man  in  this  square  volunteered,  the  half  of  you  would 
be  killed  and  those  that  came  back  would  be  cut  about, 
crippled,  blind.  "You'd  have  done  the  brave  thing,  but  a  life- 
time of  helplessness  is  a  long  price  to  pay  for  it." 

"I'll  take  my  chance,  sir!"  This  time  the  voice  came 
from  the  right. 

"Two — three — four."  O'Rane  shook  his  head  and  half 
turned  away.  "I'll  go  alone  and  trust  to  luck.  Mr.  Kest- 
rell  " 

"Oh,  damn  old  Kestrell !" 

I  could  not  locate  the  speaker,  but  the  voice  was  new. 

"He  speaks  for  labour  here,"  said  O'Rane,  "and,  though 
I've  worked  with  my  hands  in  most  parts  of  the  world,  I 
was  a  capitalist  till  the  war.  He  says  this  is  a  capitalist's 
war " 

"Ay,  and  so  it  is !"  burst  from  Kestrell. 

"Then  let  Capital  fight  for  Capital,  and  God  help  the  work- 
ing man  who's  out  there  at  this  moment  if  the  working  man 
at  home  won't  go  out  and  fight  for  him." 

He  stepped  into  the  car  and  caught  hold  of  the  wheel, 
finding  time  to  whisper — 

"I've  never  driven  one  of  these  dam'  things,  George." 

There  was  a  convulsive  movement  in  the  crowd,  and  a  knot 
of  men  ran  up  to  the  side  of  the  car. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  take  us,  sir?"  they  demanded. 

"There  are  plenty  of  recruiting  offices  if  you  want  tq 
join,"  he  answered,  rapidly  counting  the  men  with  his  eyes. 
"I  want  all  cr  none  and  I  hoped  when  you  knew  your  own 
friends  were  fighting  and  others  were  going  out  to  help.  ..." 
He  broke  off  and  looked  eagerly  at  the  faces  in  front  of  him. 
"We  should  have  made  a  fine  show !"  he  'cried,  his  voice 
ringing  with  excitement.  "I — I've  never  let  a  man  down  yet, 
and  you'd  have  stood  by  me,  wouldn't  you?  We've  never 
had  a  chance  like  this  before — to  risk  everything  so  that  if 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  391 

we're  killed  we  shall  have  spent  our  lives  to  some  purpose, 
and  if  we  come  back — however  maimed — we  shall  have  done 
the  brave,  proud  thing.  I  wanted  Kestrell  on  my  right.  ..." 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders  slightly  and  buttoned  his  coat, 
but  the  excitement  in  his  voice  and  black  eyes  was  infecting 
the  crowd. 

"Never  mind  him,  sir,"  urged  the  little  group  round  the 
car. 

With  sudden  decision  O'Rane  jumped  out  and  walked  to 
the  steps  of  the  Cross  where  Kestrell  was  standing.  Not  a 
man  moved,  but  every  eye  followed  his  progress,  and  in  the 
silence  of  the  crowded  square  there  was  no  sound  but  the  light 
tread  of  his  feet. 

"Let's  part  friends,  Mr.  Kestrell,"  he  said.  "You  were 
the  only  one  here  with  pluck  enough  to  speak  against  this 
war." 

"It's  an  unrighteous  war!"  cried  Kestrell,  two  spots  of 
colour  burning  vividly  on  his  white  cheeks. 

"Most  wars  are  that,  my  friend,  but  as  long  as  the  boys 
I  was  at  school  with  are  being  shot  down  .  .  .  Good-bye 
...  if  you  won't  come?" 

There  was  no  answer,  and  the  two  faced  each  other  until 
Kestrell's  eyes  fell.  O'Rane's  voice  sank  and  took  on  a  softer 
tone. 

"If  it's  ever  right  to  shed  blood,  this  is  the  time,"  he  said. 
"We'll  see  it  through  together,  side  by  side " 

"You're  an  officer !"  Kestrell  interjected,  as  a  man  worsted 
in  an  argument  will  seize  on  a  slip  of  grammar. 

"I'm  nothing  at  present.  If  you'll  come,  we'll  go  into  the 
ranks  together.  Get  another  friend  on  your  other  side — no 
man  comes  with  us  unless  he  brings  a  friend, — and  if  only 
one's  hit,  the  other  can  bring  back  word  of  him.  Why  won't 
you  shake  hands,  Kestrell  ?  This  is  the  morning  of  our  great- 
est day." 

That  night  Bertrand,  Loring  and  I  motored  back  to  town 
alone.  Until  we  said  good-bye  in  Knightsbridge,  hardly  a 
word  had  passed  between  us,  but  as  Loring  and  I  shook  hands 
I  remarked: 


392  SONIA 

"Well,  you  see  how  it's  done  ?  It  took  ten  minutes  instead 
of  seven  as  he  promised,  but  the  meeting  stampeded  all  right." 

"I've  seen  it  done,"  he  answered.  "Seeing  how  it's  done  is 
a  different  thing." 

We  were  all  charged  with  something  of  O'Rane's  electric 
personality  that  night,  but  at  breakfast  next  morning  Bertrand 
set  himself  to  undo  the  effects  of  the  Easterly  meeting  in  so 
far  as  they  concerned  O'Rane. 

"It's  all  nonsense,  George,"  he  said.  "A  man  of  his  talents 
and  experience,  a  born  leader  of  men " 

"I  doubt  if  you  shift  him,"  I  answered.  "He's  committed 
to  it — like  thousands  of  others  who  are  burying  themselves 
in  the  ranks  because  they  can't  wait  for  commissions." 

"He  must  outgrow  that  phase,"  said  my  uncle  impatiently. 

When  O'Rane  called  on  me  some  weeks  later  in  a  private's 
uniform,  he  would  hardly  discuss  the  subject.  Morris  was 
now  in  a  Yeomanry  regiment,  and  the  purpose  of  the  visit  was 
to  ask  me  to  accept  power  of  attorney  in  his  absence,  realize 
the  scanty  remaining  assets  of  the  firm,  and  arrange  what 
terms  I  could  with  the  creditors — at  best  an  extension  of  time, 
at  worst  a  scheme  of  composition.  I  had  the  books  examined 
soon  afterwards  by  an  accountant,  and  with  every  allowance 
for  moratorium  and  the  "act  of  God  or  of  the  King's  enemies" 
a  deficit  of  £15,000  would  have  to  be  faced  within  two  months. 

"Bertrand's  very  keen  to  get  you  a  job  where  you'll  be 
less  wasted  than  at  present,"  I  said,  when  our  business  was 
done. 

"He  still  seems  to  think  I  want  to  come  back,"  he  com- 
mented scornfully. 

"You're  one  and  thirty,  Raney,  and  in  full  possession  of 
your  powers,  as  you  told  us  at  Chepstow  a  few  weeks  ago." 

"A  good  deal's  happened  since  then,  George,"  he  answered, 
offering  me  his  hand.  "Look  here,  I  must  get  back  to  camp. 
I'll  say  good-bye  now " 

"I  shall  see  you  before  you  go  out,"  I  said. 

He  shook  his  head. 

"I  shan't  see  anyone." 


DEAD  YESTERDAY  393 

I  caught  hold  of  him  by  the  shoulders  and  made  him  look 
me  in  the  eyes. 

"What  the  devil's  the  matter?"  I  asked.  "You've  lost  all 
your  pluck." 

"Because  I've  the  wit  to  see  when  the  game's  up?"  he 
asked,  with  a  curl  of  the  lip.  "I'm  broke " 

"You  can  start  again,  as  you've  done  a  dozen  times." 

"What  for?  I  hoped  once  that  I  might  rouse  the  public 
conscience  and  give  my  whole  life  to  reducing  the  total  of 
human  misery.  .  .  .  The  one  thing  I've  done  in  the  last 
month  is  to  gather  so  much  extra  food  for  powder." 

"The  world  will  still  have  to  be  rebuilt  when  the  war's 
over,"  I  reminded  him. 

He  wriggled  out  of  my  hands  and  picked  up  his  cap  from 
the  table. 

"If  your -uncle's  about,"  he  said,  "I  should  like  to  say 
good-bye." 

I  went  to  Bertrand's  room  and  found  him  at  work  with 
some  of  the  women  who  were  to  be  responsible  for  turning 
the  house  into  a  hospital.  To  my  surprise,  Sonia  Dainton 
was  among  them,  and  I  stayed  to  speak  to  her  while  my 
uncle  excused  himself  and  went  down  to  O'Rane  in  the  dining- 
room. 

"I  want  Mr.  Oakleigh  to  let  me  help  here,"  she  explained. 
"I  must  do  something,  and  mother's  got  all  the  nurses  she 
wants." 

"Are  you  trained?"  I  asked. 

"No,  but " 

"My  dear  Sonia,  he  spends  his  day  turning  away  untrained 
amateurs." 

"But  I  could  do  something,"  she  insisted. 

"I'm  afraid  it'll  be  a  waste  of  time." 

"But  I  must  do  something,  George!  All  the  men  I  know 
are  getting  commissions,  all  the  girls  are  nursing  or  taking 
the  men's  places  ..."  She  paused  indignantly,  as  though 
I  had  suggested  that  she  was  in  some  way  exceptionally  in- 
competent. 


394  SONIA 

"Stay  and  see  him  by  all  means,"  I  said.  "He's  only 
saying  good-bye  to  Raney." 

"Is  David  going  out  ?" 

"Some  time." 

"What's  he  in?" 

"The  Midland  Fusiliers.  If  you  want  to  see  him  again, 
Sonia " 

The  door  opened,  and  my  uncle  came  in  with  his  forehead 
wrinkled  in  annoyance. 

"It's  too  late  now,"  said  Sonia,  with  a  mixture  of  relief 
arid  regret  in  her  voice.  "And  in  any  case  I  don't  know 
what  I  should  have  said." 

"You  might  have  just  shaken  hands,"  I  suggested,  as  I 
got  up  to  return  to  my  work. 

She  caught  my  arm  and  lowered  her  voice. 

"George,  why  did  he  ever  come  out  to  Innspruck?" 

"Because  he  had  a  good  deal  of  affection  for  you,"  I  said. 

"Then  why  did  he  talk  like  that?"  she  demanded,  with 
flushed  cheeks. 

"You  know  his  disconcerting  way  of  telling  people  what 
he  thinks  is  good  for  them,"  I  said. 

"That  wasn't  the  reason !" 

But  what  the  reason  was,  I  have  never  been  told.  Some- 
times I  remind  myself  that,  when  Sonia  crossed  the  Austrian 
frontier  into  Italy,  O'Rane  with  the  world  at  his  feet  knew 
himself  to  be  insolvent.  An  early  draft  of  the  Midland  Fu- 
siliers carried  him  to  France  in  January,  before  I  had  time  to 
verify  my  hypothesis. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE   MAKING  OF  AN   ENGLISHWOMAN 


"Then  he  stood  up,  and  trod  to  dust 
Fear  and  desire,  mistrust  and  trust, 
And  dreams  of  bitter  sleep  and  sweet, 
And  bound  for  sandals  on  his  feet 
Knowledge  and  patience  of  what  must 
And  what  things  may  be,  in  the  heat 
And  cold  of  years  that  rot  and  rust 

And  alter;  and  his  spirit's  meat 
Was  freedom,  and  his  staff  was  wrought 
Of  strength,  and  his  cloak  woven  of  thought." 
ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE, 

Prelude,  "Songs  before  Sunrise.* 


WHEN  my  cousin  Greville  Hunter-Oakleigh  went  out 
with  the  Expeditionary  Force,  Violet  made  me  prom- 
ise to  write  and  keep  him   posted  in  all  that  was 
going  on  in  England.    It  was  not  till  the  end  of  April  that  a 
stray  shrapnel  bullet  sent  him  to  join  the  rest  of  his  battery, 
and  in  the  intervening  nine  months  I  wrote  never  less  than 
twice  a  week.     After  his  death  his  effects  were  sent  to  his 
mother,  and  she  forwarded  me  a  sealed  packet.     I  was  sur- 
prised and  not  a  little  touched  to  find  that  he  had  kept  all  my 

395 


396  SONIA 

letters — grimy,  sodden  with  water  and  tied  up  in  the  remains 
of  an  old  puttee,  but — so  far  as  I  could  remember — a  complete 
series. 

It  was  a  strange  experience  to  sit  down  and  read  them  all 
over  again.  I  had  written  discursively  and  promiscuously — 
anything  that  came  into  my  head,  anything  that  I  thought 
would  amuse  him.  There  was  the  rumour  of  the  hour,  the 
joke  of  the  day,  an  astonishing  assortment  of  other  people's 
opinions  and  prophecies,  and  a  make-weight  of  personalia 
about  our  common  friends.  So  strange  did  I  find  my  own 
words  that  I  would  have  denied  authorship,  were  it  not  for 
the  writing.  The  jokes  of  the  day  died  in  their  day,  and  the 
rumours  endured  until  they  were  contradicted:  I  cannot  now 
believe  I  ever  felt  the  spirits  in  which  I  wrote,  or  believed 
the  mushroom  prophecies  that  cropped  up  in  the  night. 

Yet  I  am  glad  to  have  the  letters  again  in  my  possession. 
I  keep  no  diary,  and  this  rambling  chronicle  has  to  take  its 
place  in  showing  me  the  things  we  said  and  did  in  the  first 
months  of  the  war,  not  as  we  should  like  to  reconstruct  them 
in  our  wisdom  after  the  event,  but  as  they  were  thought  or 
felt  or  done  in  all  our  folly  and  shortsightedness  and  want  of 
perspective.  The  old  world  had  passed  away,  and  these 
letters  show  me  the  state  of  mind  in  which  we  sat  up  for  the 
dawn. 

Bertrand  and  I  moved  from  Princes  Gardens  to  a  flat  in 
Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  and  the  house,  used  temporarily  for 
the  reception  of  refugees,  was  gradually  transformed  into  a 
hospital  as  soon  as  we  obtained  recognition  from  the  War 
Office.  I  must  insert  a  parenthesis  to  express  my  admiration 
for  my  uncle  at  this  time.  In  his  eightieth  year,  and,  at  the 
end  of  a  generation  of  luxurious  living,  he  spent  his  day 
raising  funds  for  the  Red  Cross,  and  his  evenings  as  a  Special 
Constable  in  Knightsbridge.  Like  many  another  he  felt  that 
without  incessant  work  the  war  would  be  too  much  for  him. 

It  is  with  the  coming  of  the  refugees  that  the  letters  to  my 
cousin  Greville  begin.  Every  morning  we  looked  at  our  maps 
to  find  the  black  line  of  the  German  advance  thrust  an  inch 
or  two  nearer  Paris :  wild  stories  of  incredible  cruelties  were 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       397 

passed  from  lip  to  lip :  our  flash  of  hope  at  the  resistance  of 
Liege  died  away  with  the  fall  of  Namur.  The  short-mem- 
oried  Press  told  us  later  that  we  were  too  resolute  to  feel 
panic  or  lose  heart,  but  not  one  man  in  a  hundred  believed 
that  our  Army  could  extricate  itself  from  the  German  grip. 
By  the  rules  of  war  the  retreat  from  Mons  was  an  impossi- 
bility. We  were  driven  to  the  outskirts  of  Paris,  the  French 
Government  transferred  itself  to  Bordeaux;  some  talked  of 
gathering  together  the  fragments  on  the  Pyrenees,  others 
whispered  that  the  French  would  make  a  separate  peace. 

And  scattered  before  the  conqueror  like  chaff  or  crawling 
maimed  and  crushed  between  his  feet,  came  the  population 
of  a  prosperous  and  independent  kingdom.  Night  after  night 
Bertrand  and  I  waited  at  Charing  Cross  or  Victoria  to  meet 
the  refugee  trains ;  we  watched  the  crowded  carriages  empty- 
ing their  piteous  burden  and  saw  the  dazed,  lost  look  on  the 
white  faces  of  the  draggled,  black-clad  women.  So  the  slums 
of  San  Francisco  may  have  appeared  in  her  last  earthquake: 
an  unreal,  nightmare  crowd  hurrying  to  and  fro  with  a  child 
in  one  arm  and  a  hastily  tied  bundle  in  the  other,  while  the 
lamps  of  the  station  beat  down  like  limelight  on  their  faces 
and  showed  in  their  eyes  the  terror  that  drives  men  mad. 

The  Belgian  exodus  revealed  to  England  one  facet  of 
modern  war.  Recruits  poured  in  by  the  hundred  thousand, 
and  hardly  a  village  was  too  poor  to  take  upon  itself  the 
support  of  some  of  the  refugees.  We  listened  to  the 
broken  tales  of  their  endurance,  and  our  thoughts  went  back 
to  the  land  they  had  left.  For  North  France  was  sharing 
the  fate  of  Belgium :  our  armies  retreated  and  still  retreated. 
...  I  remember  Bertrand  pacing  up  and  down  the  dining- 
room  and  repeating  the  one  word,  "Men,  Men,  Men !" 

Then  without  warning  the  men  seemed  found.  I  left  the 
Admiralty  one  day  to  call  on  my  solicitor  with  a  bundle  of 
O'Rane's  papers,  but,  instead  of  discussing  business,  he  said, 
"What's  all  this  about  the  Russian  troops?  A  client  of  mine 
in  Birmingham  tells  me  there's  been  an  enormous  number  of 
Russians  passing  through  the  Midbnds.  What's  it  all  about?" 

I  thought  for  a  moment  and  then  asked  for  an  atlas.    We 


398  SONIA 

had  heard  nothing  of  the  story  in  Whitehall,  but  the  world 
was  apparently  humming  with  the  talk  of  Russian  millions, 
and  an  army  corps  or  so  flung  in  to  reinforce  our  western 
troops  might  save  the  day.  Together  we  traced  a  route  from 
Archangel  to  Scotland. 

"What  about  the  ice?"  asked  my  solicitor. 

"Where's  an  encyclopaedia  ?"  I  demanded  excitedly. 

To  our  own  perfect  conviction  we  established  that  Arch- 
angel could  be  kept  ice-free  till  the  end  of  August  or — occa- 
sionally— of  September.  I  left  the  office  and  drove  down  to 
the  Club.  On  the  steps  I  met  Loring  in  uniform,  with  a 
suitcase  in  his  hand. 

"Russians?"  he  repeated;  "I've  just  come  up  from  Liver- 
pool. All  the  traffic's  being  held  up  for  them.  I  saw  train 
after  train  go  through  Chester  bung  full  of  them." 

"You're  sure  they  were  Russians?" 

"Well,  the  blinds  were  down — quite  properly.  But  one 
train  pulled  up  alongside  of  us,  and  a  man  in  my  carriage 
got  out  and  spoke  to  them — in  Russian.  A  fellow  who  used 
to  be  our  Consul-General  in  St.  Petersburg.  He  ought  to 
know." 

I  went  from  the  Club  to  the  City.  The  Stock  Exchange 
was  still  closed,  but  I  found  little  clusters  of  men  bareheaded 
in  Throgmorton  Street,  rapidly  smoking  cigarettes  and  dis- 
cussing the  great  news. 

"Brother  of  mine  lives  near  Edinburgh,"  I  heard  one 
man  say.  "He  keeps  four  cars,  and  he's  had  'em  all  com- 
mandeered to  shift  the  beggars.  They're  Russian  troops, 
right  enough.  His  chauffeur  swears  to  it.  They're  sending 
half  down  from  Edinburgh  and  the  rest  from  Glasgow,  to 
equalize  the  traffic.  Fifty  thousand,  my  brother  says." 

"Oh,  I  heard  a  hundred,"  his  companion  rejoined.  "I've 
got  some  relations  at  Willesden,  and  they  saw  them.  Euston 
was  simply  packed  with  trains,  and  they  were  stopping  them 
outside  as  far  as  Willesden  and  Pinner.  My  people  went  out 
yesterday  morning  about  three  o'clock  and  gave  the  fellows 
something  to  eat  and  drink." 

My  cousin  Greville  was  given  the  benefit  of  the  Russian 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       399 

theme  with  all  the  variants  I  could  find,  and  if  it  served  no 
other  purpose  it  may  have  shown  him  how  little  title  the 
English  people  has  to  the  traditional  qualities  of  sobriety  and 
intelligence.  While  the  rumour  ran,  I  believed  and  spread 
it;  and,  though  the  official  contradiction  came  almost  as  a 
personal  affront,  I  console  myself  with  Mr.  Justice  Templeton's 
dictum  when  we  met  at  the  Club  a  few  days  later — "There 
may  have  been  no  Russians,  but  I've  hanged  men  on  flimsier 
evidence  and  no  doubt  I  shall  hang  them  again." 

And  side  by  side  with  the  Russian  myth  came  the  mutilated 
Belgian  children  and  the  German  secret  agents.  On  a  Sunday 
morning  when  I  was  spending  the  week-end  in  Hampshire, 
word  was  brought  that  a  Belgian  child  was  in  the  next  village 
— a  child  of  five  with  both  hands  cut  off  at  the  wrists.  Within 
six  hours  the  same  story  was  toM  me  of  seven  different  children 
in  as  many  villages  within  a  ten-mile  radius.  We  were 
beckoned  on  from  hamlet  to  hamlet,  always  hastening  to  reach 
that  'next'  one  where  the  myth  had  taken  its  origin.  And 
when  we  returned,  it  was  to  find  an  equally  intangible  neigh- 
bour had  found  his  wife's  German  maid  stealing  away  under 
cover  of  night  with  a  trunk  full  of  marked  ordnance  survey 
maps  and  suspicious,  unintelligible  columns  of  figures.  That 
atrocities  and  espionage  were  practised,  I  doubt  not :  the  wild, 
unsupported  stories  of  those  early  weeks  I  take  leave  to 
discredit. 

From  time  to  time  I  regaled  my  cousin  with  the  expert 
opinions  I  had  gleaned  at  fourth  hand.  At  one  moment 
Lloyd's  were  said  to  be  taking  a  premium  of  £85  to  insure 
against  the  risk  of  the  war  going  on  after  the  thirty-first  of 
March.  I  invited  Greville,  appropriately  enough,  to  dine  with 
me  in  honour  of  Peace  on  1st  April.  At  another  time  Sir 
Adolf  Erckmann  was  quoted  as  telling  a  committee  of  bankers 
that  German  credit  would  collapse  on  15th  November.  And 
once  a  week  a  new  date  was  fixed  for  the  entry  of  Italy  and 
the  Balkan  States  into  the  war.  The  definite,  circumstantial 
character  of  the  stories  was  the  one  feature  more  amazing 
than  their  infinite  variety. 

It  was  long  before  the  financial  scare  of  the  early  days 


400  SONIA 

evaporated.  Everyone  seemed  to  reduce  his  establishment, 
cut  down  his  expenses  and  perhaps  live  in  only  three  or  four 
rooms  of  his  house.  There  was  also  a  deliberate,  if  rather 
sentimental,  attempt  to  live  more  simply  out  of  consideration 
for  the  hardships  of  men  at  the  Front.  The  gourmets  of  the 
Eclectic  Club  ceased  to  drink  champagne  for  a  while,  and 
the  grumblers  gave  committee  and  secretary  a  rest.  There 
was  no  entertaining  for  the  first  three  months  of  the  war, 
and  when  I  started  dining  out  again  towards  the  end  of  the 
year  I  found  much  talk  of  "War  meals"  and  "what  we  used 
to  do  before  the  war."  You  would  also  hear  arrangements 
being  made  for  the  purchase  of  clothes  "on  the  day  peace  is 
signed" — as  though  the  pangs  of  asceticism  were  being  quickly 
felt. 

The  personal  notes  in  my  letters  make  melancholy  read- 
ing in  retrospect.  Again  and  again  I  find  such  words  as, 
"Have  you  seen  that  Summertown  has  just  been  killed?" 
"Sinclair  is  home  wounded."  And,  though  many  pages  were 
taken  up  with  the  names  of  friends  who  had  taken  commis- 
sions in  one  or  other  regiment,  the  list  of  those  who  went  out 
never  to  return  grew  longer  with  every  letter.  My  cousin 
outlasted  all  our  common  acquaintances  with  the  exception  of 
Loring,  Tom  Dainton  and  O'Rane — and  of  these  three  Dain- 
ton  only  survived  him  nine  days. 

After  reading  the  last  letter  in  the  bundle  and  reminding 
myself  of  our  methods  of  making  war,  I  could  not  help  won- 
dering what  was  to  be  made  of  our  strange  national  character. 
Our  pose  of  indifference  and  triviality  deceived  half  Europe 
into  thinking  we  were  too  demoralized  to  fight — and  the 
history  of  war  has  shown  no  endurance  to  equal  the  retreat 
from  Mons.  Girls  who  had  never  stained  their  fingers  with 
anything  less  commonplace  than  ink,  found  themselves,  after 
a  few  weeks'  training,  established  in  base  hospitals,  piecing 
together  the  fragments  of  what  had  once  been  men.  The 
least  military  race  in  the  world  called  an  army  of  millions 
into  existence ;  and,  while  the  Germans  were  being  flung  back 
from  the  Marne,  our  women  had  to  make  shirts  for  the  new 
troops,  and  our  colonels  advertised  in  "The  Times"  for  field- 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       401 

glasses  to  serve  out  to  their  subalterns.  As  I  sat  up  for  the 
dawn  the  old  problem  which  Loring  and  I  had  discussed  in 
the  window-seat  of  93D  High  Street  still  presented  itself  for 
solution.  Liberty  and  discipline  were  not  yet  reconciled. 

It  was  towards  the  end  of  November  that  Loring  told  me, 
in  the  course  of  luncheon  at  the  Club,  that  he  stood  in  need 
of  my  services  to  help  him  get  married. 

"There's  no  point  in  waiting,"  he  explained.  "Vi  and  I 
have  only  got  ourselves  to  consider;  it'll  be  quite  private.  If 
our  date  suits  you,  we'll  consider  it  fixed." 

"Is  the  War  Office  giving  leaves  these  times?"  I  asked. 

"A  week — between  jobs.  I'm  chucking  the  Staff  and 
joining  Val  in  the  Guards.  It's  all  rot,  you  know,"  he  went 
on  defensively,  as  though  I  were  trying  to  dissuade  him. 
"I'm  as  fit  to  spend  my  day  in  a  water-logged  trench  as  any- 
one out  there ;  and  anybody  with  the  brain  of  a  louse  could 
do  my  present  work.  Talking  of  Valentine,  I'm  coming  to 
the  conclusion  that  he's  one  of  the  bravest  men  I've  ever 
met." 

"What's  he  been  doing?"  I  asked. 

"Lying  awake  at  night  with  the  thought  of  having  to  go 
out,"  Loring  answered.  "You  daren't  talk  war-talk  with 
him;  he's  going  through  hell  at  the  prospect.  But  he  sticks 
to  it.  And  he'll  probably  break  down  before  he's  been  out 
three  days — like  any  number  of  other  fellows.  Poor  old 
Val!  I  thought  it  might  cheer  him  up  if  I  got  into  his 
battalion."  He  sat  silent  for  a  moment,  drumming  with  his 
fingers  on  the  table.  "I  say,  let's  cut  all  the  usual  trimmings 
— if  I  get  killed,  I  want  you  to  look  after  Vi.  You'll  be  her 
trustee  under  the  settlement,  if  you'll  be  so  kind;  and,  if  there 
are  any  kids,  I  should  like  you  to  be  guardian.  Will  you 
do  it  ?  Thanks !  Now  let's  come  and  get  some  coffee." 

A  fortnight  later  the  wedding  took  place  from  Loring 
House.  Lady  Loring,  Amy,  Mrs.  Hunter-Oakleigh  and  I 
were  the  only  persons  present  beside  the  bride  and  bride- 
groom. Loring  appeared  for  the  last  time  in  his  staff  officer's 
uniform  and  shed  it  with  evident  relief  as  soon  as  we  had 
lunched.  The  honeymoon  was  being  spent  in  Ireland,  and, 


402  SONIA 

while  Violet  changed  into  her  going-away  dress,  we  withdrew 
to  the  library  for  a  last  smoke  together. 

"I  am  now  a  married  man,"  he  observed  thoughtfully. 

"I  see  no  outward  change,"  I  said. 

"No.  All  the  same,  it  is  different.  For  example,  ought 
married  men  to  have  secrets  from  their  wives?" 

"It  depends  on  the  secret." 

He  smoked  for  a  few  minutes  without  speaking  and  then 
got  up  and  stood  in  front  of  the  fire  with  his  back  to  me. 

"You  shall  hear  it,"  he  said,  half  turning  round,  "and  I'll 
be  bound  by  your  decision.  I  had  a  call  last  night  from  Sonia 
Dainton." 

I  raised  my  eyebrows  but  said  nothing. 

"Vi'd  been  dining  here,"  he  went  on,  "and  I'd  just  seen 
her  home.  When  I  got  back  I  was  told  a  lady  was  waiting 
to  see  me.  I  found  her  in  here — alone.  We  hadn't  met  since 
the  engagement  was  broken  off." 

He  paused  and  turned  his  head  away  again. 

"I  don't  know  what  /  looked  like.  She  was  as  white  as 
paper.  I  asked  her  to  sit  down,  but  she  didn't  seem  to  hear 
me.  We  neither  of  us  seemed  able  to  start,  but  at  last  she 
managed  to  say,  in  a  breathless  sort  of  fashion,  'You're 
being  married  to-morrow.  I've  come  to  offer  you  my  best 
wishes.'  It  sounds  very  conventional  as  I  tell  it,  but  last 
night  ...  I  mumbled  out  some  thanks.  Then  she  said, 
'I  want  you  to  do  something  for  me.'  I  said  I  should  be 
delighted.  She  hesitated  a  bit  and  fidgeted  with  her  fingers ; 
then  she  sort  of  narrowed  her  eyes — you  know  the  way  she 
has — and  looked  me  in  the  face.  'I  made  your  life  unbear- 
able for  two  years,'  she  said.  'I'm  not  going  to  apologize— 
it's  too  late  for  that  kind  of  thing.  I  don't  know  why  I  did 
it ;  I'm  not  sure  that  I  saw  I  was  doing  it.  I  want  you  to  say 
you'll  try  to  forgive  me  some  day.' " 

Loring  paused  again  and  then  went  on  as  though  he  were 
thinking  hard.  "I  was  simply  bowled  over.  Sonia  Dainton 
of  all  people!  I  didn't  think  she'd  got  the  courage.  I 
couldn't  get  a  word  out.  She  stood  there  composed,  without 
a  tremor  in  her  voice,  only  very  pale  and  breathing  rather 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       403 

quickly — I  was  nearly  crying  .  .  .  the  surprise  .  .  .  the  pain, 
too.  .  .  .  You  know,  George,  you  can't  forget  things  and 
people  who've  been  part  of  your  life.  .  .  .1  caught  up  one 
of  her  hands  and  kissed  it.  Cold  as  ice,  it  was !  'There's 
nothing  to  forgive,  Sonia,'  I  said.  'Oh  yes,  there  is!'  she 
answered.  'Then  God  knows  I  forgive  it,'  I  said.  The  next 
minute  she  was  gone.  I  found  myself  sitting  on  the  edge  of 
that  table  with  my  hand  over  my  eyes,  and,  when  I  took  the 
hand  away,  the  room  was  empty."  He  turned  and  faced  me 
again.  "Shall  I  tell  that  to  my  wife?" 

"No,"  I  advised  him. 

"I  want  to  do  justice  to  Sonia.  I  didn't  know  she'd  got 
it  in  her." 

"I  give  you  my  advice  for  what  it's  worth,"  I  said. 

"But,  George,  it  was  magnificent  of  her.  .  .  .  Why  mustn't 
I  tell  Vi?" 

"You  oughtn't  to  have  told  me.    Is  she  staying  in  town?" 

"I  don't  know.  We  didn't  have  time  for  general  con- 
versation. Why  d'you  ask?" 

"I've  no  idea.    I  just  felt  I  wanted  to  go  and  see  her." 

"What  for?" 

"My  dear  Jim,  I  haven't  the  faintest  notion.  Call  it  an 
impulse." 

He  looked  at  me  interrogatively  for  a  moment.  "No, 
I'm  afraid  I  can't  help." 

It  was  not  until  the  beginning  of  February  that  I  saw  her. 
I  was  returning  to  dine  at  the  flat  in  Queen  Anne's  Mansions 
when  I  met  her  coming  out  into  the  courtyard. 

"What  brings  you  here?"  I  asked. 

"I've  been  seeing  your  uncle  again,"  she  told  me.  "Again 
asking  for  a  job,"  she  added. 

"Have  you  been  doing  one  of  these  courses?"  I  asked, 
remembering  that  on  a  previous  occasion  Bertrand  had  been 
compelled  to  decline  her  offer  of  assistance. 

"I  tried,  but  it  was  no  good,"  she  answered.  "I  fainted 
every  time  at  the  sight  of  blood.  Your  uncle's  going  to  give 
me  something  else  to  do.  Perhaps  I  shall  see  you  when  I  get 
to  work." 


4o4  SONIA 

The  hospital  was  opened  a  few  days  later,  but  I  saw 
nothing  of  Sonia  till  the  middle  of  March.  The  Admiralty 
kept  me  employed  always  for  six  and  sometimes  for  seven 
days  a  week :  whenever  I  could  get  away  on  a  Sunday  I  used 
to  sit  in  the  wards  talking  to  the  men,  but  somehow  never  met 
Sonia,  whose  activity  seemed  to  range  in  some  other  part  of 
the  building.  It  was  not,  indeed,  till  a  severe  turn  of  influenza 
laid  me  on  my  back  that  she  telephoned  to  know  if  she  might 
come  and  sit  with  me. 

"Have  you  been  taking  a  holiday?"  I  asked,  when  she 
arrived.  "I  never  see  you  in  Princes  Gardens." 

"Perhaps  you  don't  look  in  the  right  place,"  she  an- 
swered ;  and  then  seeing  my  bed  littered  with  books  and 
papers,  "You  are  surely  not  trying  to  write,  are  you?  You'll 
smother  your  sheets  in  ink.  Why  don't  you  dictate  to  me  if 
it's  anything  you're  in  a  hurry  for?" 

"Oh,  any  time'll  do  for  this,"  I  said.  "Tell  me  where 
you're  to  be  found  in  the  hospital." 

"All  over  the  place,"  she  answered,  with  a  rather  em- 
barrassed smile. 

"I've  been  in  all  three  wards,"  I  began. 

"My  dear  George,  I  told  you  I  didn't  fly  as  high  as  a 
ward." 

"Tell  me  what  you  do,  Sonia,"  I  said. 

She  spoke  jestingly,  but  I  chose  to  fancy  that  it  required 
one  effort  to  undertake  the  work  and  another  to  talk  about  it. 

"Well,  sometimes  I  carry  up  trays,"  she  said,  "and  some- 
times I  wash  up.  And  sometimes But  really,  George, 

this  can't  interest  you.  Tell  me  what  all  the  books  are 
about." 

"I'm  trying  to  straighten  out  Raney's  affairs,"  I  said. 
"I  had  no  time  till  I  was  laid  up." 

Sonia  dropped  her  handkerchief  and  picked  it  up  rather 
elaborately. 

"Is  he  hard  hit — like  everyone  else  ?"  she  inquired  casually. 
"Or  perhaps  it's  private,  I  oughtn't  to  ask." 

"I'm  afraid  it  won't  be  private  much  longer,"  I  said. 
"At  least — I  oughtn't  to  say  that.  I  don't  know  yet." 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       405 

"You  mean — it's  a  big  amount?" 

"Roughly,  fifteen  thousand  pounds,"  I  said,  referring  to 
the  accountant's  letter.  "I'm  going  to  talk  it  over  with  Bert- 
rand,  and  we'll  see  what  we  can  do.  It's  such  a  hopeless  time 
to  try  and  sell  securities,  that's  the  devil  of  it." 

Sonia  looked  at  me  reflectively. 

"And  if  you  can't  raise  it,  what  happens?  He  goes 
bankrupt?  Everything  he's  got  together  in  all  these  years 
— all  gone?" 

"That's  about  it." 

"Um."  She  got  up  and  began  drawing  on  her  gloves. 
"Well,  I  suppose  he'll  survive  it — like  other  people.  I  must 
go,  George.  How  much  longer  are  they  going  to  keep  you  in 
bed  ?  Over  Sunday  ?  I  can  come  and  see  you  then ;  it's  my 
afternoon  out.  Don't  try  to  write  any  more.  I'll  do  it  for 
you.  You  ought  to  lie  down  and  go  to  sleep ;  I'm  afraid  I've 
tired  you." 

"Indeed  you  haven't.  And  I've  only  got  one  more  letter. 
I  always  write  to  Raney  on  Thursday." 

"Well,  I  shan't  offer  to  do  that  for  you,"  she  said,  with 
a  touch  of  hardness  in  her  tone.  "Good-bye  till  Sunday." 

I  wrote  my  letter  and  composed  myself  for  the  night. 
One  habit  clung  to  Raney  in  peace  and  war,  sunshine  and 
rain:  he  was  the  worst  correspondent  in  either  hemisphere. 
Sometimes  a  friend  would  report  meeting  him  in  Bangkok  or 
Pernambuco  or  Port  Sudan ;  sometimes  a  total  stranger  would 
bring  me  a  message  from  Mexico  City;  sometimes  he  would 
arrive  in  person,  expressing  surprise  that  I  should  wonder 
what  had  become  of  him.  I  should  have  pardoned  his  laxity 
were  it  not  that  like  all  other  bad  correspondents  he  felt  ag- 
grieved if  his  friends  omitted  to  write  to  him.  So  I  wrote  and 
received  no  answer:  every  Thursday  half  an  hour  was  set 
religiously  aside  for  him,  and  every  morning  for  a  time  I 
scanned  the  casualty  lists  for  news  of  a  graver  kind. 

Sonia  was  as  good  as  her  word  and  arrived  on  Sunday  in 
time  for  tea.  We  talked  at  random  for  a  while,  and  then 
when  one  subject  was  exhausted  and  I  was  casting  about  for 
another,  she  remarked  without  warning : 


406  SONIA 

"I  say,  we've  always  been  pretty  good  friends,  haven't  we, 
George?  I  wonder  why.  I  suppose  we've  always  been 
distressingly  candid  to  each  other." 

"You've  told  me  some  things  about  yourself  that  still 
surprise  me,"  I  said,  thinking  of  her  account  of  the  motor 
tour  with  Webster. 

"I  expect  they'd  surprise  me  if  I  could  remember  them," 
she  answered,  with  a  return  to  her  old  manner.  "D'you  think 
you  understand  me?" 

"God  forbid !"  I  exclaimed. 

"Well,  will  you  oblige  me  by  not  trying  to  understand 
what  I'm  going  to  tell  you?" 

"When  you're  as  full  of  influenza  as  I  am  that's  not 
difficult." 

She  looked  at  me  for  a  moment,  and  her  cheeks  grew  very 
red. 

"Look  here,"  she  said,  "for  reasons  of  my  own,  I  don't 
want  David  made  bankrupt." 

She  paused  and  I  nodded. 

"I  haven't  got  fifteen  thousand  pounds  or  fifteen  thousand 
pence.  And  I  can't  raise  it,  either.  But  I  can  do  something 
if  other  people  will  help.  If  I  find  six  thousand,  can  you  or 
anybody  else  find  the  rest?" 

"My  dear  Sonia,"  I  said,  "the  whole  thing's  arranged. 
I  talked  to  Bertrand  on  Friday,  and  he's  putting  up  the  whole 
sum." 

"The  whole  sum?"  she  repeated,  and  there  was  dismay 
in  her  tone;  then  more  hopefully,  ".But  can  he  afford  it?" 

"It's  not  convenient,"  I  said.  "Very  few  people  would 
find  it  convenient  at  a  time  like  this,  but  he  can  do  it." 

"But  that  means  he'll  have  to  sell  things,  doesn't  it?  And 
you  said  it  was  a  bad  time  for  selling." 

I  shrugged  my  shoulders.  "That  can't  be  helped.  None 
of  us  carries  thousands  loose  in  his  pockets." 

Sonia  poured  herself  out  another  cup  of  tea. 

"He  surely  needn't  sell  the  whole  fifteen  thousand,"  she 
urged.  "I've  told  you  I  can  do  something." 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       407 

"That  only  means  you'll  have  to  sell,  and — forgive  me, 
Sonia — I  expect  your  people  have  been  hit  too." 

"But  it  isn't  their  money,  it's  mine!"  she  exclaimed  im- 
patiently. "And  I  have  sold  already.  You  say  people  don't 
carry  thousands  loose  in  their  pockets,  but  I'm  afraid  I  do." 

Her  hand  dived  into  the  bag  on  her  wrist  and  produced 
a  cheque  for  six  thousand  and  a  few  odd  pounds.  I  tried  to 
decipher  the  signature. 

"Who  are  Gregory  and  Mantell?"  I  asked. 

"  'Gregory  and  Maunsell,' "  she  corrected  me. 

"Of  Bond  Street?  Have  you  been  selling  your  jewellery, 
Sonia?" 

"Just  a  few  old  things  I  didn't  want,"  she  answered  airily. 

I  looked  at  the  cheque  and  then  at  her.  She  was  wearing 
neither  ring  nor  brooch  nor  bracelet.  Even  her  little  gold 
watch  was  gone  from  her  wrist. 

"I'll  accept  the  cheque,"  I  said,  "with  all  the  pleasure  in 
life." 

"There's  a  condition,"  she  stipulated.  "You  must  never 
tell  a  living  soul " 

I  handed  the  cheque  back  to  her. 

"I  won't  take  it  on  these  terms." 

"But  you  must!" 

"I'm  afraid  no  power  on  earth  can  compel  me.  I  insist 
on  complete  liberty  to  tell  the  whole  world,  or  keep  it  to 
myself — just  as  I  think  fit." 

She  looked  at  me  for  a  moment,  and  her  voice  softened. 

"I  think  you  might  do  this  for  me,"  she  said. 

I  shook  my  head. 

"Oh,  all  right!"  She  walked  across  the  room  and  bent 
over  the  fire  with  the  cheque  in  one  hand  and  the  poker  in 
the  other. 

I  raised  myself  on  my  elbow. 

"If  you  burn  that  cheque,  Sonia  ..." 

She  turned  a  flushed  and  angry  face  on  me. 

"It's  mine.    I  can  do  what  I  like  with  it!" 

"Unquestionably.     My  uncle  also  is  mine.     If  you  burn 


408  SONIA 

that  cheque,  I  shall  advise  Bertrand  to  take  no  further  steps 
to  help  Raney." 

She  came  back  from  the  fire  and  stood  by  my  bedside, 
with  an  expression  of  mingled  perplexity  and  stubbornness 
on  her  face. 

"I  think  you're  a  perfect  beast,  George,"  she  said. 

I  held  out  my  hand  for  the  cheque. 

ii 

It  was  at  the  end  of  this  month  or  the  beginning  of  April 
that  Loring's  battalion  went  to  the  Front.  They  had,  like 
almost  everyone  else,  had  one  or  two  false  alarms,  but  this 
time  the  order  was  not  countermanded.  After  taking  leave  of 
his  wife  he  hurried  up  to  town  and  dined  with  me  his  last 
night  in  England. 

"According  to  the  statistics  I've  got  about  another  six- 
teen days  of  life,"  he  observed,  as  we  left  the  Admiralty  and 
walked  along  the  Mall  to  the  Club.  "Second  Lieutenants 
seem  to  last  as  much  as  a  fortnight  sometimes." 

"Then  I  hope  you'll  get  rapid  promotion,"  I  said.  "The 
sooner  you  cease  to  be  a  Second  Lieutenant  the  better." 

He  laughed  a  little  bitterly. 

"My  dear  George,  it's  only  a  question  of  time.  I  may 
get  wounded,  of  course,  but  otherwise  all  this  year's  vintage 
will  be  destroyed.  You've  been  snatching  at  straws  of  hope — 
the  Russian  steam-roller,  the  Italian  diversion  in  the  south, 
the  starvation  of  Germany,  the  socialist  revolution,  the  smash 
up  of  credit  .  .  .  what's  the  latest?  Oh,  the  capture  of 
Constantinople.  That's  not  going  to  end  the  war.  You'll 
only  get  peace  by  killing  Germans,  and  they'll  kill  as  many 
of  you  as  you  kill  of  them.  The  people  who  may  possibly 
survive  will  be  the  fellows  who  enlist  about  two  years  hence. 
If  you've  got  a  cigarette,  I'll  steal  it." 

I  handed  him  my  case. 

"You're  tolerably  cheerful  about  it,"  I  remarked. 

As  he  paused  to  light  the  cigarette,  the  flare  of  the  match 
showed  nothing  but  an  expression  of  mild  boredom. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN      409 

"I'm  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other,"  he  said.  "I  simply 
don't  think  about  the  war,  it's  too  absurd !  Millions  of  men, 
thousands  of  millions  of  money,  chucked  away  in  a  night. 
And  why?  Because  Germans  breed  like  rabbits,  scamper 
outside  their  own  country  and  want  still  to  be  called  Germans ; 
and  we  won't  let  'em.  There's  no  quarrel  between  individual 
Germans  and  individual  British — or  wasn't,  till  they  made 
swine  of  themselves  in  Belgium.  It's  the  stupidest  war  in 
history.  However,  we're  in  and  we  must  come  out  on  top, 
otherwise  our  wives  and  sisters  will  be  cut  open.  Hallo! 
here's  the  Club."  He  flung  away  his  cigarette  and  stood  for  a 
moment  looking  up  at  the  lighted  doorway.  "I  wonder  if  I 
shall  ever  come  here  again?" 

"Many  times,  I  hope,"  said  I,  and  with  an  indulgent  smile 
he  accompanied  me  in  to  dinner. 

As  we  went  upstairs  to  the  smoking-room  an  hour  later 
he  told  me — what  indeed  I  had  already  heard  from  my  sister 
Beryl — that  Violet  was  expecting  a  child. 

"I  hope  it's  a  boy,"  he  said,  cutting  his  cigar  with  a  good 
deal  of  deliberation.  "They  have  the  best  time — or  did  in  the 
old  days.  I  wonder  what  your  new  After-the-War  world  is 
going  to  be  like.  You're  a  lucky  man,  George;  you'll  have 
known  life  before  and  after  the  Flood;  you'll  be  able  to  tell 
the  kid  what  sort  of  animal  his  father  was."  He  handed  me 
a  match  and  then  lit  his  own  cigar.  "Jove,  we've  known 
each  other  a  devil  of  a  long  time,  George." 

"And  an  uncommon  good  time  it  was.  We  haven't  seen 
the  end  of  it  yet." 

He  seemed  to  think  the  point  hardly  worth  contesting  and 
paced  restlessly  to  and  fro,  until  he  came  to  a  standstill  by  the 
window. 

"Come  here,  George,"  he  said,  after  a  moment's  contem- 
plation of  the  scene  without. 

I  crossed  the  room  and  looked  into  the  darkened  street. 
A  shaded  lamp  threw  its  foggy  circle  of  light  on  to  the  pave- 
ment and  house-front  of  the  opposite  side.  A  party  of  men 
and  girls  were  walking  down  the  road  with  arms  linked :  as 
they  came  under  the  light  the  left-flank  man  shouted,  "Left 


4io  SONIA 

wheel!"  and  the  line  swung  round  on  to  the  pavement  and 
stood  marking  time  before  a  row  of  recruiting  posters  pasted 
against  the  wall.  Two  of  the  men  were  in  uniform,  three  in 
mufti ;  all  were  hilarious,  and,  as  the  line  wheeled  back  and 
resumed  the  march  down  the  street,  the  sound  of  an  untune- 
ful  voice,  encouraged  by  shrill,  unrestrained  laughter,  floated 
up  to  the  window. 


"It's  a  long,  long  way  to  Tipperary, 
But  my  heart's — right  there." 


Loring  let  fall  the  blind  and  returned  to  his  chair. 

"England  at  war !"  he  remarked. 

"Try  to  understand  the  people  you're  dealing  with,"  I 
said.  "A  million  men  have  enlisted  to  that  tune." 

"I'm  not  complaining.  I  dislike  all  popular  songs. 
'Lillibullero'  drove  my  king  out  of  Ireland,  and  the  'Mar- 
seillaise' drove  the  Church  out  of  France.  Democracy  in  the 
ascendant  has  a  taste  for  songs,  and  I  don't  like  democracy 
in  the  ascendant.  But  that's  all  by  the  way.  I'm  thinking  of 
the  comedy  of  life — Germany  with  her  'Wacht  am  Rhein' 
prodding  her  soldiers  into  battle  with  a  bayonet,  and  ourselves 
with  our  own  methods.  A  pretty  scene,  you  know :  five  men 
and  four  women — all  drunk.  Three  of  the  men  plastered 
with  the  penny  flags  of  the  patriotic  life,  two  of  them  actually 
in  uniform  and  ready  to  uphold  the  neutrality  of  Belgium  and 
avenge  Louvain — who'd  heard  of  Louvain  before  it  was 
sacked? — the  women  all  drunk  on  a  separation  allowance. 
And  they  stand  nine  abreast,  shouting  a  music-hall  song  and 
looking  at  a  poster  that  says,  'Women  of  England,  is  your 
best  boy  in  khaki?'  If  you're  fool  enough  ever  to  fight,  I 
suppose  you're  doubly  a  fool  for  trying  to  keep  some  dignity 
in  the  business."  He  sighed  perplexedly.  "I  dare  say  it's  no 
worse  than  the  'Wacht  am  Rhein'  and  the  bayonet — material 
absolutism  against  uneducated  democracy." 

"Is  there  anything  in  the  world  you  think  worth  fighting 
for?"  I  asked,  as  I  handed  him  his  coffee. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       411 

"Any  ideal." 

"The  democracy  won't  always  be  uneducated." 

"It  will  as  long  as  you  and  I  have  anything  to  do  with  it," 
he  answered.  "As  a  caste  we're  played  out,  George,  and  our 
only  hope  of  power  is  to  keep  people's  stomachs  full  and 
their  heads  empty.  For  God's  sake  don't  perpetrate  the  hy- 
pocrisy of  imagining  we're  an  intelligenza  with  those  posters 
in  sight.  I've  been  thinking  a  bit  in  camp  lately,  George." 

"Do  you  fire  these  views  off  in  mess?"  I  asked. 

"To  a  handful  of  schoolboys  who  think  wa.r's  the  greatest 
fun  in  the  world?  No!  But  it  makes  you  think  when  you 
see  a  pasty-faced  clerk  dragged  from  his  office-stool,  given  a 
chest,  turned  into  a  man  and  then  flung  across  the  Channel 
to  be  blown  limb  from  limb.  I  don't  think  it's  worth  it  unless 
we've  got  some  ideal — hardly  worth  praying  to  be  'slightly 
wounded,'  which,  I  understand,  is  the  ambition  of  every  man 
over  thirty.  I  see  the  opportunity,  but  I  don't  see  anyone 
ready  to  grasp  it." 

"A  lot  depends  on  the  length  of  the  war,"  I  suggested. 

I  had  in  mind  the  lessons  of  South  Africa  and  the  in- 
corrigible buoyancy  of  the  English  temperament.  If  the  war 
ended  in  a  week,  there  would  be  found  jaunty  spirits  to  ex- 
plain that  their  victory  was  won  without  preparation,  all  in 
the  day's  work,  that  they  had  pottered  over  to  the  Front  to 
kill  time  before  the  opening  of  the  London  Season.  In  their 
rush  back  to  the  old  life  they  would  be  accompanied  by  every- 
one who  boasted  what  he  would  do  or  buy  a  drink  on  the  day 
peace  was  signed.  A  longer  war  with  its  swelling  casualty 
lists  might  chasten  the  temper  of  England,  or  equally  it  might 
provoke  a  Merveilleuses  reaction  and  set  men  harking  back 
to  the  fashions  of  "the  good  old  days"  before  the  fourth  of 
August. 

It's  a  gloomy  look  out  either  way,"  said  Loring  when  we 
parted  that  night.  "Good-bye  old  man.  We  meet  in  heaven 
if  not  before." 

Three  days  later  I  received  a  call  from  Sonia.  Since  my 
bout  of  influenza  she  had  formed  the  habit  of  coming  in 
three  or  four  times  a  week  when  her  work  at  the  hospital  was 


4i2  SONIA 

over,  and  we  used  to  talk  for  an  hour  and  exchange  letters 
from  friends  and  relations  at  the  Front.  On  this  occasion  she 
arrived  earlier  than  her  wont  and  sent  a  message  that  she 
wished  to  see  me  at  once.  Hurriedly  finishing  my  dressing, 
I  went  in  and  found  her  standing  in  front  of  the  fire,  very 
pale  and  with  eyes  red  with  weeping. 

"I  hope  nothing's  wrong  .   .   ."I  began. 

She  gave  a  little  choking  sob  and  stumbled  into  my  arms. 

"Tom's  killed !"  she  cried. 

"Sonia!" 

She  nodded  convulsively.  "Father's  just  heard  from  the 
War  Office.  He  wired  to  me.  It  was  two  days  ago." 

I  led  her  to  a  sofa  and  tried  to  say  something  that  would 
not  sound  too  hackneyed.  Tom  and  I  had  drifted  apart,  but 
for  five  years  we  had  shared  a  study  at  school,  and  I  knew 
the  loss  that  his  death  would  bring  to  the  family.  The  Dain- 
ton  history,  as  I  read  it,  was  one  of  successive  failures.  With 
the  accepted  ingredients  of  happiness  in  their  possession,  Sir 
Roger  had  never  been  allowed  to  live  the  unobtrusive 
country  life  of  his  ambition,  Lady  Dainton  never  quite  achieved 
the  social  conquest  of  her  dreams,  Tom  had  married  a  wife 
who  disappointed  his  parents,  and  Sonia  had  not  married  at 
all.  The  only  one  who  seemed  to  get  the  best  out  of  existence 
was  Sam,  equally  at  home  with  his  regiment  in  India  and  in 
London,  and  entirely  unaffected  by  the  pretentious  schemings 
of  Crowley  Court. 

"I  want  you  to  lend  me  some  money,"  Sonia  went  on,  as 
the  first  passion  of  weeping  spent  itself.  "I  haven't  enough 
to  get  home,  and  I  want  to  be  with  mummie." 

I  emptied  my  note  case  on  to  the  table. 

"Have  you  dined?"  I  asked. 

She  shook  her  head  as  though  the  mention  of  food 
nauseated  her,  but  I  insisted  on  her  eating  a  cutlet  and  drink- 
ing a  little  wine.  When  my  uncle  came  in,  she  made  an  effort 
to  calm  herself  and,  as  we  drove  to  Waterloo  and  travelled 
down  to  Melton,  she  was  able  to  speak  composedly  of  the 
days  of  twenty  years  before  when  we  played  and  fought  to- 
gether in  our  school  holidays. 


"You're  going  to  be  brave,  Sonia?"  I  asked,  as  the  train 
steamed  into  the  station. 

"I  shan't  cry  any  more,"  she  promised,  giving  my  hand 
a  little  squeeze. 

"And  you  will  give  your  mother  some  message  of  sym- 
pathy from  me?" 

"But  you're  coming  up  to  the  house?" 

"You'll  both  find  it  easier  to  meet  if  I'm  not  there,"  I 
said.  "There's  a  train  back  soon  after  one." 

She  flung  her  arm  suddenly  round  my  neck. 

"George,  I  feel  I  was  always  such  a  beast  to  him!"  she 
whispered. 

A  day  or  two  later  the  official  announcement  appeared 
in  the  Press,  and  within  a  fortnight  a  less  than  usually  belated 
dispatch  gave  an  account  of  the  fighting  in  which  he  had  met 
his  end.  A  British  trench  had  been  lost,  regained  and  once 
more  lost.  As  our  troops  fell  back  the  first  time,  Captain 
Dainton  stayed  to  assist  a  wounded  subaltern,  and  it  was  as 
the  two  struggled  from  the  trench  into  the  open  that  a  bullet 
passed  through  Tom's  heart.  Thanks  to  his  assistance,  the 
subaltern,  Lieutenant  Longton,  had  regained  the  British  lines, 
and  the  name  of  Captain  Dainton  was  included  in  the  list  of 
recommendations  at  the  end  of  the  dispatch. 

Sonia  came  round  the  same  evening  and  asked  me  to  ac- 
company her  the  following  Sunday  to  a  private  hospital  in 
Portland  Place.  Longton  had  been  invalided  home  and  was 
anxious  to  see  any  relations  of  the  man  who  had  saved  his 
life.  Lady  Dainton  had  already  called,  but  Sonia  wanted  a 
first-hand  account  of  her  brother's  last  engagement. 

We  were  unable  to  add  very  much  to  the  information  given 
us  in  the  dispatch.  It  was  an  affair  of  seconds — an  arm 
stretched  out,  a  hoist  on  to  the  shoulders,  a  few  yards  zigzag 
running,  a  sudden  fall.  Longton  had  crawled  back  on  all 
fours  to  his  own  trench,  with  a  rain  of  bullets  piercing  his 
clothes  and  furrowing  the  earth  all  round  him. 

"Are  you  badly  hit?"  I  asked  him,  when  his  story  was 
told. 


414  SONIA 

There  was  a  bandage  round  his  head,  but  he  seemed  in  the 
finest  health  and  spirits. 

"It  just  touched  the  skull,"  he  told  me.  "I  think  I  must 
have  had  a  moment  of  concussion.  I  remember  feeling  a 
twenty-ton  weight  hit  me  on  the  top  of  the  head,  then  a  com- 
plete blank.  The  next  thing  was  the  feeling  that  I  was  being 
picked  up,  and  I  found  myself  being  trotted  back  with  my 
arms  round  Dainton's  neck.  I  was  perfectly  all  right  by  the 
time  I  got  back  to  our  reserve  trench  and  when  the  counter- 
attack started  I  went  along  with  the  rest  of  them.  It  was 
only  when  we'd  been  beaten  back  a  second  time  that  I  thought 
I'd  better  be  cleaned  up  before  I  got  any  dirt  into  the  wound." 

"Are  you  in  much  pain?"  Sonia  asked. 

"I  get  a  bit  of  a  headache  sometimes,  but  I  feel  as  fit  as 
ten  men.  That's  what  makes  it  so  sickening  to  lie  here.  I 
want  to  go  out  again." 

He  was  a  good-looking,  fair-haired  boy  of  nineteen,  with 
blue  eyes  and  a  ready  smile.  His  face,  neck  and  hands  were 
tanned  deep  brown  with  exposure  to  the  sun  and  wind.  He 
gave  me  the  impression  of  not  having  a  nerve  in  his  body. 

"As  you  want  to  get  back,"  I  said,  "there's  no  harm  in  my 
telling  you  you're  the  first  man  I've  heard  say  that." 

The  smile  died  from  his  eyes  and  his  whole  expression 
hardened. 

"I  want  to  kill  some  more  of  the  beggars,"  he  said,  "before 
I  can  die  happy."  He  broke  off  suddenly  with  an  unexpected 
laugh.  "Lord!  if  my  father  heard  me!  I'm  the  son  of  a 
parson,  you  know ;  I'm  supposed  to  be  taking  orders  some 
time  or  other.  But  first  of  all  I  must  get  level  over  your 
brother,  Miss  Dainton,  and  another  man." 

"Who's  the  other  maa?"  Sonia  asked.    "I  may  know  him 
if  he  was  a  friend  of  my  brother's." 

"Oh,  he  wasn't  in  our  battalion  at  all.  When  we  got  to 
the  reserve  trenches  I  found  him  sitting  very  comfortably  on 
someone  else's  overcoat:  he'd  lost  his  way  in  the  retreat  and 
seemed  inclined  to  stay  with  us.  I  didn't  mind — we  were  too 
much  thinned  out  for  that;  besides,  I  couldn't  make  out  if 
he'd  been  hit  or  what,  he  was  staring  all  about  him  and  jump- 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       415 

ing  at  every  sound.  I  think  he  must  have  been  wounded, 
'cause  when  we  started  our  counter-attack  he  staggered  out 
and  came  a  cropper  over  the  wire  and  everything  else.  Awful 
plucky  thing  to  do,  you  know;  some  of  our  fellows  weren't 
half  keen  on  attacking — nerve  a  bit  shaken,  you  know.  I 
gave  the  order,  and  for  a  second  or  two  nothing  happened. 
Then  this  chap  shouted  out,  'Come  on,  you  men !'  and  went 
over  the  top  of  the  trench  like  a  two-year-old.  The  others 
followed  after  that,  but  I  couldn't  drag  them  out,  myself. 
The  fellow  must  have  been  pretty  bad  from  the  way  he  kept 
going  over.  I  tried  to  send  him  back,  but  it  was  no  use." 

"Was  he  killed?"  I  asked,  as  Longton  paused. 

"I'm  not  sure  it  wasn't  worse.  We  got  dear  old  Seven 
Dials " 

"Got  what?"  I  asked. 

"That  was  the  name  of  the  trench,"  Longton  explained. 
"We  held  it  for  a  bit,  and  then  the  Bosches  shelled  us  out 
again.  They  got  hold  of  this  chap,  and  when  we  made  our 
second  counter-attack  that  evening  we  found  him  hanging 
from  the  supports  of  a  dug-out,  with  his  feet  six  inches  off 
the  ground  and  a  bayonet  through  either  hand.  Crucified." 
He  drew  breath  and  burst  out  with  concentrated  fury, 
"My  God!  those  devils!  ...  I  was  in  hospital  by  that  time; 
I  never  saw  him.  If  I  had  .  .  .  !  We  met  on  the  ambulance 
train,  and  he  was  raving  with  delirium.  I  did  what  I  could 
for  the  poor  brute.  .  .  .  He  was  too  bad;  I  couldn't  make 
out  what  he  wanted."  He  sat  up  in  bed  with  blazing  eyes,  as 
the  picture  repainted  itself  in  his  memory,  then  with  a  sudden 
shiver  seemed  to  recall  where  he  was.  "I'm  sorry,  Miss  Dain- 
ton.  These  are  the  things  one's  supposed  to  forget  when  one 
comes  back  to  England.  But — well,  it  might  have  been  me 
but  for  your  brother,  and  I'm  going  to  make  somebody  pay 
for  it." 

"But — what  happened  to  him?"  Sonia  asked,  with  horror 
in  her  eyes.  "Where  is  he?" 

Longton  shook  his  head. 

"I  should  think  it's  long  odds  he's  dead.    All  the  way  back 


4i  6  SONIA 

to  Boulogne  he  was  raving  ...  oh,  Lord !    Here  comes  the 
sister!    It's  all  right  Sister;  I'm  not  getting  excited!" 

Sonia  bade  him  good-bye  and  clutched  my  arm  until  we 
got  out  into  the  street. 


in 


As  soon  as  Longton  was  well  enough  to  be  allowed  out  of 
the  hospital,  I  arranged  one  or  two  small  parties  to  keep  him 
amused  till  the  time  came  for  his  next  medical  board.  Sonia 
would  not  dine  in  public  so  soon  after  her  brother's  death, 
but  we  all  met  on  one  occasion  at  the  flat,  on  another  I  took 
Longton  to  the  Carlton,  and  on  yet  another  Bertrand  insisted  on 
our  both  dining  with  him  at  the  Club  and  spending  the  eve- 
ning at  a  music-hall. 

Longton  enjoyed  everything  and  was  only  disappointed 
because  I  sent  him  home  to  bed  each  night  at  eleven-thirty 
instead  of  going  on  to  a  night  club.  I  cannot  say  that  a  trying 
day's  work  at  the  Admiralty  in  the  middle  of  a  war  is  the 
best  or  even  a  good  preparation  for  appreciating  the  lighter 
relaxations  of  London.  Frankly,  I  was  not  sorry  when 
Longton,  with  a  wry  face,  departed  to  the  parental  vicarage 
in  Worcestershire. 

It  was  Bertrand  who  seemed  to  derive  the  most  lasting, 
if  also  the  grimmest,  satisfaction  from  our  bout  of  mild  dis- 
sipation. 

"When  the  Devil  was  sick,  the  Devil  a  monk  would  be," 
he  murmured,  as  we  put  Longton  into  a  taxi  on  the  last  night 
and  dispatched  him  to  Paddington.  "August  to  April.  The 
war's  only  been  going  on  eight  months,  George." 

"'  Only'?" 

"The  Devil's  almost  well  again.  I  don't  see  him  ordering 
his  cowl  and  sandals." 

I  knew  quite  well  what  he  meant,  for  in  the  first  week  of 
August  we  had  dined  together  at  the  Eclectic  Club  and  mar- 
velled at  the  new  spirit  of  uncomplaining  frugality  in  un- 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       417 

expected  quarters.  By  April  the  grumblers  grumbled  again 
and  no  longer  attempted  to  live  as  simply  as  soldiers  under 
fire. 

"We  were  quite  sorry  for  the  Belgians,"  my  uncle  went 
on.  "We  couldn't  do  too  much  for  them;  they  were  the  one 
topic  of  conversation " 

"They're  still  that,"  I  said. 

"Yes.  Women  who  have  not  seen  their  husbands  killed 
or  their  daughters  violated  can  always  raise  a  laugh  by  saying, 
'How  are  your  Belgian  atrocities  getting  on?  I  can't  get  my 
creatures  to  take  baths.' "  Bertrand  heaved  a  sigh.  "So  the 
great  nations  of  the  world  help  the  weak.  I'm  glad  they  keep 
the  streets  darkened — we  must  have  something  to  remind  us 
we're  at  war.  And  of  course  we  can't  get  alcohol  after  ten." 

"Unless  you  know  the  manager  personally,"  I  said,  "or 
call  it  by  another  name." 

Bertrand  linked  his  arm  in  mine  and  leaned  on  my  shoulder. 

"George,  there  are  moments  when  I  think  we  deserve  to 
be  beaten,"  he  said.  "Not  the  fellows  who  are  fighting — 
they  ought  to  win,  they  will  win.  But  it  would  be  a  rough- 
and-ready  poetic  justice  if  they  marched  to  Berlin  to  find  the 
German  Army  had  gone  up  in  air-ships  and  was  wiping  out 
the  people  at  home.  I  wouldn't  mind  driving  about  with  a 
light  to  show  'em  where  to  go.  We'd  clear  out  a  few  politicians 
first — fellows  who  are  trying  to  grab  Cabinet  rank  out  of  the 
turmoil  of  the  war,  other  fellows  who  are  using  the  war  as 
an  excuse  for  fomenting  some  dirty  conspiracy  to  attack  a 
class  or  push  a  nostrum  thrice-damned  in  times  of  peace. 
And  we'd  clear  out  the  Press.  And  the  strike  leaders.  And 
the  women  who  flutter  about  in  Red  Cross  uniforms  and  high- 
heeled  patent  leather  shoes  seeking  whom  they  may  devour." 

"I  could  spare  the  Erckmann  group,"  I  added. 

"It  takes  more  than  a  war  to  drive  them  out  of  the  lime- 
light," said  my  uncle.  "I  had  supper  at  the  Empire  Hotel  the 
other  night,  and  they  were  all  there — Erckmann  (by  the  way, 
he  calls  himself  Erskine  now)  and  Mrs.  Welman  and  that 
fellow  Pennington  et  illud  genus  omne" 

"I  thought  they  were  running  a  hospital  near  Boulogne," 


4i  8  SONIA 

I  said.    "There  was  some  scandal  or  other  in  connexion  with 
it." 

Bertrand  nodded.  "The  authorities  don't  allow  anybody 
to  go  to  it  now,  so  there's  nothing  for  the  promoters  to  do 
but  come  back  to  England.  I  met  Mrs.  Welman  as  I  was 
putting  on  my  coat,  and  she  said,  'Isn't  this  war  dreadful? 
There'll  be  no  Season  this  year.'  I  said  to  her,  'Mrs.  Welman, 
the  saddest  thing  about  this  war  is  the  number  of  people  who 
haven't  been  killed.' " 

As  we  turned  into  St.  James's  Park,  Bertrand  paused  and 
swept  his  arm  demonstratively  round. 

"Little  has  been  left  of  the  London  I  knew  as  a  boy,"  he 
said — "or  of  the  England,  or  the  world,  for  that  matter.  It's 
all  changed — except  Man.  I'm  old,  George:  devilish  near 
eighty.  Half  a  century  ago,  when  I  was  your  age,  I  used  to 
think  we  were  moving  slowly  upwards ;  our  laws,  our  sports, 
our  whole  attitude  of  mind,  everything  seemed  to  be  becoming 
more  humane.  Bless  my  soul !  I  went  to  cockfights  when  I 
was  a  youngster!  And  I've  seen  men  hanged  in  public  out- 
side Newgate.  .  .  .  When  the  war  came  I  watched  my  ideals 
being  blown  away  like  cobwebs  over  the  mouth  of  a  gun.  .  .  . 
I — I  outgrew  that  phase.  And  though  there  was  a  reaction 
and  I  thought  I  saw  the  country  sobering,  hang  me  if  I  haven't 
outgrown  that  phase  too!  If  we  non-combatants  can't  keep 
the  promises  we  made  to  ourselves  eight  short  months  ago  .  .  . 
is  it  only  want  of  imagination,  George?  .  .  .  There's  but  one 
person  I  see  much  whose  life  has  been  changed  by  the  war — 
and  I  don't  know  how  long  it  will  last  there.  You  know  your 
friend  Miss  Dainton  washes  saucepans  and  cleans  grates?" 

"And  a  number  of  other  things,"  I  said. 

"Her  brother's  death- " 

"It  began  before  that,  Bertrand." 

"I  believe  it  did.  She's  got  pluck,  that  girl.  I  shall  be 
sorry  to  lose  her." 

"Is  she  leaving  the  hospital?" 

He  nodded. 

"She's  strained  her  heart.  Nothing  serious,  but  she's  got 
to  rest.  As  soon  as  I  can  get  someone  to  take  her  place  she's 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHWOMAN       419 

leaving  me.  Well,  she's  the  one  and  pretty  well  the  only  one. 
George,  I  can't  believe  the  people  of  this  country  is  the  rotten 
stuff  it  pretends  to  be !" 


CHAPTER  X 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON 

"In  the  fell  clutch  of  circumstance 

I  have  not  winced  nor  cried  aloud. 
Under  the  bludgeonings  of  chance 
My  head  is  bloody,  but  unbow'd." 


W.  E.  HENLEY,  "Invictus." 


TOWARDS  the  end  of  April  it  occurred  to  me  that 
Burgess  might  like  a  short  account  of  Tom  Dainton's 
death  for  publication  in  the  "Meltonian."  I  gave 
him  the  story  as  I  had  received  it  from  Longton,  and  in 
thanking  me  for  my  letter  Burgess  sent  me  half  a  dozen  pages 
of  the  proofs  of  the  "Melton  Roll  of  Honour."  It  was  a 
formidable  list.  Of  all  my  friends  from  Melton  and  elsewhere, 
Val  Arden,  Greville  Oakleigh  and  Loring  were  still  un- 
touched; Sam  Dainton  was  in  hospital  with  a  flesh  wound 
and  might  be  expected  back  in  the  fighting  line  in  eight  weeks, 
and  a  score  of  civilians  from  twenty  peaceful  walks  of  life 
were  still  in  training.  The  rest  would  never  return — and  the 
war  was  but  nine  months  old.  I  could  not  yet  classify  O'Rane's 
fate,  but  it  was  five  months  since  he  had  gone  out,  and  the 
Midland  Fusiliers  had  been  through  murderous  fighting.  I 

420 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          421 

had  long  since  given  up  reading  the  closely  printed  daily 
"Casualties  among  non-commissioned  officers  and  men." 

"I  am  afraid,"  I  wrote  to  Burgess,  "the  odds  are  against 
our  seeing  him  again." 

Then  I  corrected  the  proofs  and  dropped  them  into  the 
letter-box  in  the  passage.  My  uncle  had  left  the  flat  at  half- 
past  eight  for  his  turn  of  duty  as  a  Special  Constable,  and  in 
his  absence  I  settled  down  to  deal  with  the  month's  accounts 
from  the  hospital  in  Princes  Gardens.  It  was  a  cold  night, 
with  a  wind  that  sent  gusts  of  smoke  blowing  into  the  room ; 
I  shivered  and  coughed  for  a  while,  but  the  draught  at  my 
back  was  unbearable,  and  I  was  jumping  up  to  close  the 
door  when  a  low  voice  immediately  behind  me  said : 

"You  left  the  door  open,  so  I  thought  I'd  walk  in." 

O'Rane  was  standing  within  a  yard  of  me.  Thinner  even 
than  when  I  met  him  first  as  a  half-starved  waif  at  Melton, 
white-cheeked  and  lined,  with  his  skin  drawn  tight  as  drum 
parchment  over  the  bones  of  his  face,  but  alive  and  smiling, 
with  his  great  black  eyes  fixed  on  my  face,  he  grasped  his 
hat  with  one  hand  while  the  other  rested  on  the  handle  of  the 
door. 

"I've  just  been  telling  Burgess  you  were  dead,"  I  cried. 

"Infernal  cheek!"  he  answered,  with  a  faint  breathless 
laugh.  "Steady  on  with  my  hand,  old  man,  it's  bandaged! 
I've  just  come  up  from  Melton.  You  might  ask  me  to  come 
in,  George." 

I  looked  at  him  and  drew  a  long  breath. 

"Thank  Heaven,  Raney!" 

"May  I  ...  I  say,  go  gently  with  me !"  He  leant  against 
the  door,  panting  with  exertion.  "Did  you  come  here  to  dodge 
me  ?  I  went  straight  from  Waterloo  to  your  house,  but  there 
was  a  reek  of  iodoform.  .  .  .  I've  had  my  fill  of  iodoform 
lately.  I  want  you  to  give  me  a  bed,  George,  and  help  me  out 
of  my  coat  and  put  me  into  a  comfortable  chair." 

"Where  were  you  wounded?"  I  asked,  as  I  took  his  coat 
and  pressed  him  into  a  chair  by  the  fire. 

He  held  out  his  hands,  which  were  covered  by  loose  chamois 
leather  gloves. 


422  SONIA 

"A  bit  cut  about,"  he  explained.  "I'm  just  keeping  the 
dirt  out." 

"Was  that  all?" 

"My  only  wounds,"  he  answered  rather  deliberately. 

"You  look  a  most  awful  wreck,  Raney." 

He  was  lying  back  in  the  chair  as  though  he  had  no  bones 
in  his  body,  and  his  weak,  tired  voice  had  lost  its  tone  and 
music. 

"I  only  left  hospital  yesterday,"  he  protested. 

"How  much  leave  have  you  got?" 

"As  much  as  I  like.  The  Army's  bored  with  me.  That's 
why  I  went  to  Melton." 

"Do  try  to  be  intelligible,  Raney,"  I  begged. 

He  assumed  a  comical  expression  of  grievance. 

"Really,  George!     You  know  how  fond  of  me  Burgess 


"I  remember  he  asked  you  to  join  his  staff  ten  years  ago." 

His  lank  body  became  alert  v/ith  interest. 

"You  hadn't  forgotten  that  either?  They  were  my  first 
words  to  him.  I  marched  into  his  library,  —  he  hasn't  had  a 
window  open  since  I  left,  —  seized  him  by  the  hand  and  told 
him  I  hadn't  seen  him  since  he  offered  me  a  place  on  his  staff. 
'Which  thou  didst  greet  with  mockery  and  scorn,  laddie,'  he 
said. 

"  'Was  it  a  firm  offer,  sir?'  I  asked. 

"  'I  know  not  this  babble  of  the  money-changers,'  he  said. 
'The  vineyard  is  full.' 

"  'Haven't  you  room  for  one  more  labourer,  sir?'  I  asked. 

"'Laddie,'  he  said,  'thy  place  is  set  in  the  forefront  of 
the  hottest  battle.  Wherefore  hast  thou  broken  and  fled?'  " 

O'Rane's  gloved  right  hand  travelled  up  and  covered  his 
eyes. 

"I  talked  to  him  for  a  bit,  with  the  result  that  I  propose 
to  stay  with  you  till  Thursday  and  then  go  back  to  Melton 
as  a  master." 

He  uncovered  his  eyes  and  looked  at  me  as  if  to  see  how 
I  should  take  the  news. 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          423 

"But  how  soon  are  you  going  back  to  France?"  I  asked. 

He  shook  his  head  slowly. 

"I  told  you  the  Army  was  bored  with  me,  George.  I've 
been  invalided  out." 

"For  a  cut  hand?" 

He  laughed  sadly. 

"My  looks  don't  pity  me,  do  they?  A  patriotic  lady  at 
Waterloo  was  quite  indignant  because  I  wasn't  in  uniform. 
I  feel  shaken  up,  George,  and  if  you  offer  me  a  drink  I  shan't 
refuse  it." 

He  was  unaccountably  distraught  and  stayed  my  hand 
before  I  had  begun  to  pour  out  the  whisky.  Then  he  accepted 
a  cigar  and  threw  it  back  on  to  the  table.  I  felt  that  he  had 
been  allowed  out  of  hospital  too  soon. 

"How  did  you  get  wounded?"  I  asked. 

"In  a  counter-attack,"  he  answered  listlessly.  "We  were 
shelled  out  of  our  trench,  then  we  got  it  back,  then  they 
cleared  us  again,  and  I — well,  you  see,  I  didn't  run  fast 
enough." 

The  account  was  sufficiently  vague,  but  phrase  following 
phrase  had  a  ring  of  familiarity,  and  a  picture  began  to  form 
itself  in  my  mind. 

"Where  did  this  happen,  Raney?"  I  asked. 

"I  don't  know  whereabouts  it  was  on  the  map,"  he  an- 
swered. "If  you  want  to  put  up  a  tablet  in  my  honour,  get 
anyone  on  our  front  to  direct  you  to  Seven  Dials." 

As  long  as  I  could  I  resisted  the  memories  stirred  by  that 
name.  O'Rane  sat  carelessly  swinging  one  leg  over  the  arm 
of  the  chair  and  staring  into  the  fire.  As  I  watched  his  pale 
face  and  nervous  movements,  a  wave  of  nausea  swept  over 
me,  and  moments  passed,  leaden- footed,  before  I  could  be 
sure  of  my  voice. 

"What's  the  matter  with  the  other  hand?"  I  asked  care- 
lessly. 

"A  bayonet  jab,"  he  answered. 

I  sprang  to  my  feet  as  the  last  web  of  uncertainty  was 
swept  away. 

"God  in  Heaven !    It  was  you,  Raney !" 


424  SONIA 

"What  was  me?"  he  flung  back,  leaping  out  of  the  chair 
as  though  I  were  attacking  him. 

We  stood  face  to  face,  panting  with  excitement. 

"I  heard  what  happened,"  I  said.  "Of  course  I  didn't 
know  who  it  was.  A  fellow  in  the  hospital  train,  after  you 
were  cut  down " 

O'Rane  stumbled  forward  and  laid  his  maimed  hands  clum- 
sily on  my  shoulders. 

"Man,  you  don't  want  to  drive  me  mad,  do  you?"  he 
whispered. 

I  threw  an  arm  round  his  waist  and  led  him  back  to  his 
chair.  He  dropped  limply  back  and  sat  motionless,  save  when 
he  wiped  his  forehead  with  the  back  of  his  glove. 

"It's  been  touch-and-go  as  it  is,"  he  murmured,  pressing 
his  hand  against  his  side.  "Now  and  again  .  .  .  when  I 
can't  sleep,  you  know  .  .  .  and  it  all  comes  back  .  .  .  I— 
I — I  never  know  how  long  I  can  keep  my  brain."  He 
stretched  out  his  hand  for  me  to  take.  "Promise  me  one 
thing,  George !"  he  begged,  with  a  graver  note  in  his  voice. 
"You'll  never  ask  me  about  it  or  mention  it  to  me?  And 
you  won't  pity  me?  And — and — well,  you  know  the  sort  of 
thing  I  can't  stand,  George." 

"I  promise." 

"It  was — just  a  bayonet  wound.  You  know  how  I  was 
caught  ?" 

"You  were  wounded  before,  weren't  you?  I  heard  you 
went  down  two  or  three  times  in  the  charge." 

He  rose  slowly  and  stood  before  me. 

"I've  been  invalided  out,  and  yet  nothing  shows?  Burgess 
thought  I  was  a  deserter,  and  the  patriotic  lady  at  Waterloo 
.  .  .  You  see  nothing  wrong?" 

I  walked  slowly  round  him. 

"I  may  be  blind,  Raney "  I  began. 

His  face  twitched  into  a  smile,  and  one  hand  shot  out  and 
closed  over  my  wrist. 

"Old  man,  you're  almost  as  blind  as  I  am !"  he  whispered. 
"Mind  my  hand,  for  God's  sake !  Yes,  I  told  you  at  Chepstow 
we  should  have  to  risk  everything  we  valued.  .  .  .  Both,  yes. 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          425 

.  .   .  Oh,  stone-blind.  .   .    .  Old  man,  if — if  I  can  stand  it, 
you  can  too !" 

That  night  I  sat  up  by  myself  waiting  for  my  uncle  to 
return.  He  was  on  duty  till  two,  but  I  could  not  go  to  bed 
without  seeing  him.  O'Rane  had  retired  early  in  a  state  of 
complete  exhaustion  and  dropped  asleep  almost  as  soon  as  he 
was  between  the  sheets.  He  would — as  ever — accept  no 
assistance.  I  showed  him  his  room,  watched  him  touch  his 
way  round  the  walls  and  furniture  and  then  left  him.  He 
rejoined  me  for  a  moment  to  complete  his  tour  and  find  out 
where  the  bathroom  lay,  and  we  said  good  night  a  second 
time.  A  few  moments  later  I  strolled  in  to  say  I  had  given 
orders  that  he  was  not  to  be  called.  The  room  was  in  dark- 
ness when  I  entered,  and  he  was  unpacking  his  suitcase  and 
arranging  brushes  and  razors  on  the  dressing-table.  It  may 
be  to  confess  a  want  of  imagination,  but  I  think  I  realized 
then  for  the  first  time  something  of  the  meaning  of  blindness. 

Bertrand  returned  punctually  at  two-thirty. 

"You're  late,  George,"  he  said.  "Hallo,  are  you  seedy? 
You  look  as  if  you'd  seen  a  ghost." 

"I  have,"  I  said.  "Look  here,  I've  got  a  peculiarly  re- 
volting story  to  tell  you.  D'you  like  it  now  or  in  the  morn- 
ing?" 

"I'm  not  very  keen  to  have  it  any  time,"  Bertrand 
answered,  with  a  distaste  in  his  tone. 

"I'm  afraid  you  must.  Raney's  back  from  the  Front 
and  staying  here " 

"Raney?" 

"Yes,  and  there  are  one  or  two  things  that  mustn't  be 
mentioned  before  him.  I  only  want  to  put  you  on  your 
guard." 

"Oh,  if  that's  all  ...  drive  along ;  I  may  as  well  sleep  on 
it." 

"If  you  can,"  I  said.  "You  remember  that  story  of  Long- 
ton's  I  told  you?" 

"About  the  man  ..."  My  uncle  shuddered.  "Please 
don't  let's  have  that  again." 


426  SONIA 

"Only  two  sentences,"  I  said.  "The  man  they  crucified 
was  Raney.  And  the  reason  they  caught  him  was  because 
he  was  blind." 

Bertrand  twice  moistened  his  lips  with  the  tip  of  his 
tongue.  All  the  vigour  seemed  to  have  gone  out  of  him,  and 
his  hands  twitched  as  though  he  had  no  control  over  them. 
I  thought  I  had  better  finish  what  I  had  begun. 

"It  was  the  concussion  of  a  bursting  shell,"  I  said. 
"Double  detachment  of1  the  retina.  He  wandered  about 
dazed  and  half  mad,  got  into  the  wrong  trench,  charged  .  .  . 
Well,  you  know  the  rest." 

My  uncle  rose  slowly  to  his  feet,  steadied  himself  against 
the  table  and  stumbled  towards  the  door. 

"Where  have  you  put  him?"  he  asked. 

"I'll  show  you,"  I  answered.  "He's  asleep,  so  you  mustn't 
disturb  him,  and — the  subject's  never  discussed." 

My  uncle  nodded. 

I  could  have  sworn  that  we  crossed  the  hall  and  opened 
the  door  opposite  without  a  sound  being  made,  yet  before  I 
had  time  to  turn  on  the  light,  Raney  was  sitting  up  in  bed 
demanding  who  we  were. 

"We  didn't  mean  to  wake  you,"  I  said.  "My  uncle's  just 
come  in." 

The  startled  expression  passed  from  his  face  and  left  it 
smiling. 

"The  last  time  we  met,  sir,"  he  said,  in  the  terrible  weak 
whisper  that  did  duty  for  a  voice,  "I  was  once  again  a  self- 
invited  guest  in  your  house." 

He  held  out  a  bandaged  hand  in  the  direction  from  which 
my  voice  was  coming,  and  my  uncle  clasped  it  tenderly. 

"It's  the  most  welcome  compliment  you  can  pay  me, 
David,"  he  said.  "When  first  we  met  I  asked  leave  to  help 
you  in  any  way  I  could.  I  ask  again,  though  I'm  afraid  there'll 
be  no  change  in  the  answer." 

No  better  appreciated  tribute  could  have  been  offered, 
and  I  saw  Raney's  white  cheeks  flush  with  pleasure. 

"You  don't  think  I'm  done  for,  sir?"  he  demanded,  drawing 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          427 

his  thin  body  erect  in  the  bed.  "They— they  couldn't  kill  me, 
you  see." 

"You're  only  just  beginning.  Good  night,  my  boy."  He 
paused  as  though  he  had  something  else  to  say,  then  laid  a 
hand  on  O'Rane's  head,  and  repeated,  "Good  night,  my  boy." 

At  the  door  I  heard  myself  recalled.  Raney  waited  till 
my  uncle's  footsteps  had  died  away  and  then  beckoned  me  to 
the  bedside. 

"I  want  to  clear  up  one  thing,  George,"  he  said.  "That 
charge,  you  know.  I  can't  say  what  your  version  may  be,  but 
I  tell  you  frankly  I  went  out  because  I  wanted  to  be  finished 
off."  He  wriggled  down  under  the  sheets  and  lay  with  his 
hands  clasped  under  his  head.  "I  don't  feel  like  that  now. 
There's  any  amount  of  kick  left  in  me.  The  only  things.  .  .  . 
Look  here,  George,  give  me  time  to  get  used  to  it,  to  put  some 
side  on,  you  know.  I've  always  ridden  a  pretty  high  horse, 
and  it's  a  bit  of  an  effort  to  get  down  and  walk.  .  .  .  Don't 
spring  any  surprises  on  me,  will  you?  There  are  some  people 
I  feel  I  can't  meet.  .  .  .  Let  me  down  gently:  you  can  pre- 
pare people  a  bit.  .  .  .  George,  I'm  not  going  to  chuck  the 
House.  Fawcett  was  blind,  and  he  was  a  Minister.  .  .  .  I'm 
not  going  to  chuck  anything!" 

In  the  morning  I  wrote  half  a  dozen  notes  to  the  people 
I  thought  would  be  most  interested  to  hear  of  O'Rane's  re- 
turn. The  half-dozen  did  not  include  Sonia,  and  I  am  not  in 
the  least  concerned  to  know  whether  I  did  right  or  wrong  in 
omitting  her.  When  we  met  at  the  hospital  on  the  following 
Sunday,  she  announced  her  intention  of  coming  back  to  tea 
with  me.  I  told  her  of  O'Rane's  presence,  adding  that  he  was 
wounded  and  that  the  ordering  of  the  flat  was  no  longer  in 
my  hands.  She  inquired  the  extent  of  his  wounds,  and  I  made 
a  clean  breast  of  the  whole  story.  Sonia  whitened  to  the  lips, 
pressed  for  further  information  and  formulated  a  grievance 
that  she  had  not  been  told  before. 

"You  must  take  me  to  see  him  at  once,"  she  said,  as  I 
attempted  no  defence. 

"He's  not  always  very  keen  to  meet  people,"  I  warned 
her. 


428  SONIA 

"There's  something  I  want  to  say  to  him,"  she  answered. 

I  bowed  to  the  inevitable,  and  we  returned  to  Queen  Anne's 
Mansions.  Sonia  waited  in  the  hall  while  I  went  in  to  O'Rane, 
but  there  was  no  sign  of  her  when  I  returned.  Hurrying 
along  the  corridor  I  found  her  standing  by  the  lift. 

"I'm  sorry,  Sonia  .   .   ."I  began. 

"Oh,  I  knew  when  you  didn't  come  back  that  he  wouldn't 
see  me." 

"He's  nothing  like  himself  yet,"  I  explained  lamely. 

Sonia  laughed  sceptically. 

"He'll  have  to  be  all  right  before  he  goes  to  Melton  on 
Thursday.  My  dear  George,  I  thought  you  and  I  were  always 
candid  with  each  other !" 

I  said  nothing. 

"Don't  bother  to  come  down  with  me,"  she  begged,  as  the 
lift  door  opened. 


On  the  morning  after  Sonia's  brief  call  I  went  into  O'Rane's 
bedroom  while  he  was  dressing  and  asked  him  if  he  would 
give  her  a  chance  of  meeting  him  before  he  went  down  to 
Melton.  It  was  a  difficult  overture  to  make,  for  I  knew  some- 
thing of  his  personal  sensitiveness,  but  he  could  not  indefi- 
nitely plead  ill-health  as  a  reason  for  avoiding  her,  and — at 
worst — I  wished  to  be  furnished  with  a  new  excuse. 

His  brows  contracted  when  I  mentioned  her  name,  and  I 
was  sorry  to  have  introduced  the  subject,  for  though  in  mind, 
body  and  voice  he  was  rapidly  recovering  strength,  I  felt  he 
required  still  to  be  handled  delicately. 

"I'm  very  busy,"  he  told  me,  "and  if  I  weren't  I  see  no 
good  in  meeting  her.  To-night  your  uncle's  piloting  me  down 
to  the  House— 

"I  think  you  will  be  doing  her  a  kindness,  Raney,"  I 
suggested. 

"I  can't  afford  it." 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          429 

"It  will  cost  you  nothing." 

He  lathered  his  face  in  silence  for  a  few  moments. 

"George,  I  once  had  Sonia  Dainton  in  the  hollow  of  my 
hand,"  he  said.  "I've  done  my  share  of  handling  crowds  and 
getting  my  orders  carried  out,  and  when  we  came  back  from 
Austria  last  summer  I'd  bent  her  will.  You've  known  me 
some  time,  old  man,  and  you  know  I  don't  placate  Nemesis. 
I've  had  a  good  run  for  my  money  and  I've  not  done  yet,  but 
Sonia  saw  me  climb  from  nothing  to — well,  at  least,  something. 
I  had  money  and  a  position — and  by  God!  I  didn't  need  a 
Bobby's  arm  to  get  across  the  street !  You  can  tell  her  that !" 

I  lit  a  cigarette  and  waited  for  his  passion  to  cool. 

"Tell  her  that,  George !"  he  repeated  more  quietly. 

"If  you  want  to  insult  her,"  I  said,  "you  must  do  it  your- 
self." 

"I  don't  want  to  meet  her!" 

"Are  you  afraid  to,  Raney?" 

"Fear  isn't  a  common  fault  of  mine,"  he  answered. 

"Are  you  afraid  to  meet  her,  Raney?"  I  repeated. 

He  turned  round  and  faced  me,  his  thin  body  silhouetted 
by  the  sun  shining  through  his  pyjamas. 

"I've  not  got  the  courage  to  hear  people  say  she  married 
me  out  of  pity  for  a  blind  man,"  he  answered  through  closed 
teeth,  "if  that's  what  you  mean." 

"I  have  only  asked  you  to  see  her  for  five  minutes  before 
you  go  down  to  Melton,"  I  reminded  him. 

He  covered  his  face  with  his  hands  and  turned  away. 

"Did  your  friend  on  the  hospital  train  tell  you  that  when 
I  was  delirious  I  shouted  her  name  till  they  heard  me  the 
other  end  of  Boulogne?  I'm  flesh  and  blood  like  other  people 
old  man ;  I  know  my  limitations " 

"What  shall  I  tell  her?"    I  asked  as  I  got  up  to  go. 

"Anything  you  like !  The  flat's  yours,  you  can  let  in  whom 
you  please.  .  .  .  No,  I  don't  want  to  make  your  position  any 
harder,  but  the  account's  closed.  I  paid  for  the  fun  of 
bringing  her  back  from  Innspruck  by  telling  her  what  I 
thought  of  her.  It  may  have  done  her  good.  .  .  .  She's  got 
no  claim  on  me,  and  I  don't  see  that  I'm  bound  to  meet  her." 


430  SONIA 

As  we  sat  down  to  breakfast  I  was  handed  a  telegram 
from  Val  Arden,  asking  if  I  should  be  lunching  at  the  Club, 
as  he  was  home  on  leave.  I  am  growing  used  to  this  as  to  a 
thousand  other  developments  of  war,  yet  I  long  found  it 
strange  to  meet  a  man  driving  from  Victoria  in  the  mud  that 
had  plastered  his  clothes  in  the  trenches,  to  see  him  change 
into  mufti,  dine  and  spend  the  evening  at  a  music-hall,  hurry 
away  to  the  country  for  a  day's  shooting  and  return  to  his 
regiment  ninety-six  hours  after  leaving  it. 

I  have  met  a  score  of  friends  enjoying  this  short  reprieve, 
all  in  riotous  spirits  and  splendid  health,  full  of  confidence 
for  the  future  and  treating  war  and  its  ghastly  concomitants 
with  the  cheerful  flippancy  that  makes  our  race  the  despair 
of  other  nations.  And  if  these  meetings  had  their  macabre 
side,  I  hope  it  was  hidden  at  least  from  my  guests.  Yet  I 
should  be  sorry  to  count  the  men  who  have  scrambled  back, 
leave  over,  into  the  trenches  to  be  killed  almost  before  their 
feet  touch  the  ground. 

"You  must  come  and  help,  Raney,"  I  said,  after  reading 
the  telegram.  From  hints  in  Loring's  rare  letters  I  gathered 
— what  any  but  a  professional  soldier  might  have  guessed — 
that  all  men  are  not  equally  fitted  to  shoulder  a  rifle  and  that 
more  than  six  months'  route-marching  and  musketry  practice 
was  needed  to  turn  a  neurotic  novelist  into  a  nerveless  fighter. 
Indeed,  there  are  few  professions  so  modest  as  the  army  in 
its  assumption  that  a  few  months'  drill  and  a  shilling  manual 
will  make  a  soldier.  "Pick  me  up  at  the  Admiralty  and  we'll 
go  together." 

"I  must  call  at  the  bank  first."  He  paused  and  crumbled 
his  toast  between  his  fingers.  "George,  in  two  words  how 
do  I  stand?" 

Like  many  questions  that  have  to  be  answered  sooner  or 
later,  I  should  have  preferred  to  answer  this  later. 

"I  realized  everything,"  I  told  him.    "You  came  out  square." 

He  sat  in  silence,  calculating  in  his  head. 

"You  realized  everything?"  he  said  at  last.  "That's  not 
the  whole  truth,  George.  You  didn't  bring  me  out  square  on 
that." 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          431 

I  pushed  away  my  plate  and  filled  a  pipe. 

"Jove !  I  must  get  down  to  the  Admiralty !"  I  said. 
"There  was  a  small  balance  against  you,  Raney.  One  or  two 
people  offered  to  advance  it,  and  as  I  had  your  power  of 
attorney " 

"Who  were  they,  George?" 

".  .  .1  accepted  the  money,  which  was  accompanied  by 
a  request  that  their  names  should  not  be  disclosed.  Meet  me 
at  one,  Raney.  Good-bye." 

I  started  to  the  door,  but  his  troubled  expression  was  so 
piteous  that  I  did  not  like  leaving  him. 

"I  get  paid  as  a  member.  .  .  ."he  murmured  to  himself. 
"Burgess  will  pay  me,  too  .  .  .  and  I  shall  get  a  pension.  .  .  . 
It  doesn't  cost  much  to  live.  ..."  Then  turning  to  me  im- 
ploringly he  cried,  "George,  you  must  tell  me  who  they  were ! 
I  must  repay  them!  Old  man,  you  don't  want  to  break  my 
luck?" 

With  his  wonderful  black  eyes  on  mine — eyes  that  I  could 
hardly  yet  believe  were  sightless — I  was  unable  to  discuss 
what  he  was  pleased  to  call  his  luck. 

"The  secret's  not  mine,"  I  said.  "But  I'll  arrange  for  the 
repayment." 

"Jim  Loring  was  one." 

"Perhaps ;  or  again,  perhaps  not." 

My  luncheon-party  opened  uncomfortably,  for  I  had  first 
to  warn  Arden  what  fate  had  overtaken  O'Rane  and  then 
whisper  to  Raney  that  he  must  exert  himself  to  make  the  meal 
cheerful.  Valentine  greeted  me  unsmilingly  with  the  words, 
"They  prolong  the  agony  scientifically,  don't  they?" 

"Three  months  without  a  scratch  isn't  bad,"  said  O'Rane. 

"But  if  you're  going  to  be  killed  in  the  end?"  he  asked, 
spreading  out  his  hands.  "I  don't  mind  roughing  it,  I  don't 
mind  responsibility — I'd  send  a  battalion  to  certain  death  as 
blithely  as  the  most  incompetent  staff  officer.  I  suppose  I 
can  stand  being  killed  like  other  people,  but  I  can't  face  being 
wounded  and — my  God ! — I  can't  stand  that  infernal,  never- 
ending  noise!"  He  shuddered  and  was  silent  for  a  while. 
"I'm  an  exception  to  the  general  rule,"  he  went  on.  "Out 


432  SONIA 

there,  there's  only  one  religion — you're  going  to  escape  and 
your  neighbour's  going  to  be  killed.  It  must  be  cheering  to 
believe  that." 

We  survived  luncheon  because  O'Rane  took  hold  of  the 
conversation  on  that  word  and  discussed  the  new  wave  of 
mysticism  that  was  passing  over  the  world.  "The  ways  of 
God  to  man"  were  justified  in  a  hundred  different  fashions, 
and  from  the  first  week  of  the  war  the  Book  of  the  Revelation 
had  been  more  quoted — and  perhaps  less  understood — than 
at  any  time  since  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
exegesis  of  the  day  contemplated  the  war  as  a  Divine  purge 
to  cleanse  Germany  of  moral  perversion  and  punish  Belgium 
for  the  Congo  atrocities.  France  was  being  held  to  account 
for  a  stationary  birthrate  and  the  expulsion  of  the  religious 
orders,  and  England — faute  de  mieux — shared  the  guilt  of  a 
Liberal  Government  which  had  carried  a  Welsh  Disestablish- 
ment Bill. 

"Is  there  anything  below  the  surface,  Raney?"  I  asked. 
"I  see  a  megalomaniac  preaching  universal  empire  for  a  gen- 
eration of  people  who  have  some  show  of  reason  for  regarding 
themselves  as  invincible.  Will  the  history  books  endorse  that 
view  in  a  hundred  years'  time?" 

"A  hundred — yes.  A  thousand — no."  He  shook  his  head 
reflectively.  "In  a  thousand  years,  when  the  world's  a  single 
State,  it  will  be  able  to  criticize  and  abolish  an  institution  with- 
out going  to  war.  There's  a  survival  of  the  fittest  among  in- 
stitutions as  well  as  among  animals,  and  all  the  non-dynastic 
wars  have  been  challenges  flung  to  an  existing  order.  The 
Holy  Roman  Empire  was  challenged  by  Napoleon — and 
couldn't  justify  itself.  Philip  the  Second  challenged  the  Re- 
formed Church — unsuccessfully.  Alexander  the  Fifth  chal- 
lenged John  Huss — and  beat  him.  Alaric  challenged  Rome, 
Hannibal  challenged  Rome.  And  Rome  justified  herself  once, 
but  not  the  second  time.  It's  a  non-moral  system  which  let 
the  Inquisition  survive  four  hundred  years  and  slavery  as 
many  thousand. 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          433 

"Lift  not  your  hands  to  it  for  help,  for  it 
Rolls  impetently  on  as  thou  or  I." 

You've  six  different  civilizations  struggling  to  justify  them- 
selves in  this  war." 

My  guests  walked  back  with  me  to  the  Admiralty,  and  we 
parted  at  the  Arch. 

"Let  me  know  when  you're  home  again,  Val,"  I  said,  as 
we  shook  hands. 

He  looked  at  me  absent-mindedly  for  a  moment,  then 
turned  on  his  heel,  only  pausing  to  call  back  over  his  shoulder, 
"Good-bye  to  you  both." 

O'Rane  put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder  and  whispered  in  my 
ear: 

"Make  Jim  Loring  state  a  case  to  the  colonel  and  get  the 
boy  sent  back  to  train  recruits  at  the  Base.  I've  seen  fellows 
go  like  that  before." 

I  wrote  to  Loring  that  night,  and  received  a  reply  six  days 
later.  Valentine  had  diagnosed  his  own  case  better  than  any 
of  us,  and  the  letter  contained  the  news  of  his  death.  "It  was 
instantaneous,  I  am  glad  to  say,"  Loring  wrote.  "But  a  stray 

bullet,  miles  behind  the  line !  There's  an  awful  perversity 

about  this  dreadful  business." 

After  O'Rane  left  me  at  the  Admiralty  I  received  a  message 
inviting  me  to  join  him  and  my  uncle  at  the  House  for  dinner. 
I  had  to  decline,  as  I  could  not  say  how  soon  my  work  would 
be  over,  and  I  was  preparing  to  dine  alone  at  the  flat  when 
Sonia  was  announced. 

"Come  and  join  me,"  I  said,  but  she  hesitated  at  the  door 
and  shook  her  head. 

"I've  dined  already,  but  I  wanted  to  say  good-bye.  You 
know  I've  had  to  leave  the  hospital  ?" 

"Do  come  in,  Sonia,"  I  said. 

"D'you  allow  dogs  in?    I've  brought  Jumbo." 

She  opened  the  door  to  its  widest  extent  and  a  vast  St. 
Bernard  squeezed  past  her  and  ambled  up  to  my  chair. 

"My  dear,  where  did  you  get  him?"  I  asked.  "I  under- 
stood the  mastodon  was  extinct." 

"Darling,  don't  let  him  call  you  names !"  she  cried,  throw- 


434  SONIA 

ing  off  her  cloak  and  flinging  her  white  arms  round  the  great 
shaggy  neck.  "He  was  Tom's,  and  I've  had  him  since — you 
know.  Is  David  in?" 

"He's  dining  at  the  House,"  I  told  her. 

She  dropped  on  to  her  knees  and  pulled  the  dog's  head 
on  to  her  lap. 

"Come  and  look  at  the  new  collar,  George,"  she  said, 
crumpling  his  ears  with  her  fingers. 

I  bent  down  and  read  the  inscription : 

"DAVID  O'RANE,  ESQRE,  M.P., 
HOUSE  OF  COMMONS" 

"It's  the  only  address  I  know,"  she  explained.  "George, 
I  simply  can't  bear  to  think  of  him  going  off  and  living  all 
alone  at  Melton — in  the  dark.  Just  introduce  them  and — 
and  please,  George,  don't  tell  him  it  comes  from  me  or  I  know 
he'll  refuse  it." 

"I'll  do  my  best,"  I  said. 

In  the  distance  I  heard  the  grating  sound  of  a  latchkey. 
Sonia  scrapmbled  to  her  feet  with  terror  in  her  brown  eyes. 

"George,  was  that  the  front  door?" 

It  was  barely  nine,  but  before  I  could  speak  the  door 
slammed  and  cautious  feet  crossed  the  hall. 

"Any  dinner  left,  George?"  O'Rane  demanded,  as  he  put 
his  head  into  the  room.  "The  House  is  up,  and  your  uncle's 
gone  to  the  Club.  I  was  rather  tired,  so  I  thought  I'd  come 
here."  He  paused  to  sniff.  "Onion  sauce!  Say  there's 
enough  for  two !" 

"Any  amount,"  I  answered.     "Tell  me  how  you  got  on." 

Sonia  nodded  to  the  door  and  telegraphed  me  a  question 
with  her  eyes. 

"I'd  better  tell  you "  I  began. 

"Everyone  was  as  kind  as  kind  could  be,"  he  said,  pulling 
in  a  chair  to  the  table  and  placing  his  hat  carefully  within 
reach.  "Everyone  tumbled  over  everyone  else  to  shake  hands 
with  me.  ...  I  say,  have  you  started  a  dog?  I  thought  I 
touched  something  warm  and  soft.  It's  all  right.  ...  Of 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          435 

course,  the  voices  are  the  very  devil  at  first.  Your  uncle  piloted 
me  in  .  .  . "  He  stopped  suddenly  and  faced  round  to  every 
corner  of  the  room  with  head  thrown  back  and  dilated  nostrils. 
"George,  is  there  anyone  here?" 

Sonial  rose  from  her  chair. 

"I  am,  David." 

"I  was  trying  to  explain "  I  began. 

"I  didn't  think  you'd  be  back  so  soon,"  she  added. 

O'Rane  pushed  back  his  chair. 

'Why  should  you  apologize  ?"  he  asked,  with  a  laugh.  "I'm 
afraid  I  interrupted  you  without  knowing  it." 

His  hand  felt  its  way  along  the  table  until  his  fingers 
closed  over  the  brim  of  his  hat. 

"Where  are  you  off  to,  Raney  ?"  I  asked. 

"I'll  slip  round  to  the  Club,"  he  answered,  as  he  moved 
to  the  door. 

Sonia  laid  her  hand  on  his  shoulder.  ; 

"I'm  really  going,  David,"  she  said.  "The  doctor  says  I've 
got  to  be  in  bed  by  ten.  As  I'm  here,  I  must  just  tell  you 
how  pleased  I  am  to  hear  you're  getting  on  all  right.  Mother 
will  be  very  glad  to  see  you  any  time  you  can  come  over 
from  Melton." 

"Very  kind  of  her,"  he  murmured  conventionally. 

Sonia  turned  and  held  cut  her  hand  to  me.  The  line  of  her 
lips  was  very  straight. 

"Good-bye,  George." 

She  stretched  out  her  hand  to  O'Rane,  but  had  to  touch 
his  before  he  understood  what  she  was  doing.  "I  have  never 
thanked  you  for  bringing  me  back  from  Innspruck." 

O'Rane's  face,  already  hard,  seemed  to  grow  tighter  in 
every  muscle. 

That  was  before  we  came  into  the  war,"  he  said.  "Fve 
forgotten  everything  before  that." 

"You  told  me  then  that  I  shouldn't  be  able  to  help  any- 
one  "  she  began. 

"I  apologize,  Sonia." 

"I'm  afraid  it  was  true.  I  can't  carry  a  tray  from  one 
room  to  another.  If,  in  spite  of  that,  I  can  be  of  any  assist- 


436  SONIA 

ance  to  you" — he  made  an  almost  imperceptible  gesture  of  im- 
patience, but  she  went  on  deliberately, — "If  I  can  help  you 
by  body  or  soul  in  any  way — at  any  time — in  any  place " 

"It's  sufficiently  comprehensive,  Sonia." 

She  dropped  on  one  knee  and  kissed  his  gloved  hand.  I 
had  to  put  my  arm  round  her  as  we  went  into  the  hall,  for  her 
eyes  were  dim  with  tears,  and  her  whole  body  trembled.  The 
St.  Bernard  followed  us  to  the  door  and  looked  reproachfully 
at  her  as  she  bent  down  and  pressed  kisses  on  to  his  broad 
forehead. 

"You've  been  the  devil  of  a  time,"  O'Rane  said  irritably, 
when  I  returned. 

"I  couldn't  take  her  through  the  hall  with  the  tears  running 
down  her  cheeks,"  I  answered. 

He  got  up  and  walked  to  the  fireplace,  where  he  stood 
resting  his  head  on  his  hand.  He  was  still  there  twenty  min- 
utes later  when  my  uncle  came  in  from  the  Club. 

"Could  George  give  you  any  dinner  ?"  asked  Bertrand. 

"I  didn't  feel  inclined  for  any,  thank  you,  sir." 

in 

On  the  day  before  the  opening  of  the  Melton  term  I  went 
as  usual  to  talk  to  O'Rane  while  he  was  dressing  for  break- 
fast. Burgess  was  allotting  him  rooms  in  the  bachelor  quar- 
ters, and  there  O'Rane's  interest  in  the  subject  ceased.  There 
might  be  furniture,  carpets  and  bedding,  and  in  that  case  he 
would — in  his  own  phrase — "be  striking  it  rich" ;  or  again 
there  might  be  bare  boards,  and  in  that  event  his  travelling 
rug  would  be  useful.  Someone  would  lend  him  a  cap  and  gown, 
there  were  shops  in  Melton,  and,  above  all,  he  was  an  old 
campaigner. 

My  first  idea  had  been  to  ask  Lady  Dainton  to  see  him 
settled.  Then  I  discovered  a  wish  to  go  myself  and  see  how 
my  young  cousin  Laurence  was  progressing.  Finally  I  pro- 
duced an  old  letter  from  Burgess,  reproaching  me  for  never 
going  near  the  school. 

"You  do  fuss  so!"  Raney  exclaimed,  walking  barefoot 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          437 

round  the  room  until  he  found  a  sunny  piece  of  carpet.  "I've 
got  to  start  on  my  own  sometime.  And  I've  got  a  dog.  Where 
did  Jumbo  come  from,  George  ?" 

"The  clouds,"  I  said.  "Why  shouldn't  I  be  allowed  to 
see  my  own  cousin?" 

"Send  him  a  fiver.  He'll  appreciate  it  much  more.  George, 
I  know  you  want  to  be  helpful,  but  none  of  the  masters  knows 
I'm  coming,  nobody  knows  I've  been  wounded.  They — they 
can  just  dam'  well  find  out,  especially  the  boys.  You  haven't 
given  me  away  to  your  cousin  ?" 

"I've  said  nothing,  but  if  you're  taking  the  Under  Sixth 
you'll  drop  across  him.  Raney,  what  in  the  name  of  fortune 
are  you  going  to  Melton  at  all  for?" 

He  gave  a  low  whistle,  and  the  great  St.  Bernard  moved 
slowly  forward  and  touched  his  hand. 

"What  does  a  kiddie  do  when  he's  hurt?"  he  demanded, 
dropping  cross-legged  on  to  the  floor.  "I  wanted  some  place 
1  knew  .  .  .  out  of  the  turmoil  .  .  .  some  place  where  I  could 
rest  and  think  it  all  out.  We've  got  to  get  a  New  Way  of  Life 
out  of  this  war,  George." 

"Those  were  pretty  well  Loring's  last  words  before  he  went 
out,"  I  said.  "There's  the  opportunity  if  anyone  will  take  it. 
What's  to  be  the  new  Imperative,  Raney?" 

He  caressed  the  dog  for  a  moment  and  then  said  inter- 
rogatively : 

"The  old  one,  the  same  old  one  that  I  gave  you  years  ago 
in  Ireland,  'Thou  shalt  cause  no  pain.'  Why  shouldn't  we 
revert  to  the  parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan  as  a  standard  of 
conduct  ?" 

"Will  you  preach  it  in  the  smoking-room  of  the  Eclectic 
Club?"  I  asked. 

"Can't  I  preach  it  to  boys  before  ever  they  get  there  ?"  he 
retorted.  "This  war  won't  leave  us  much  but  lads  and  old 
men — and  the  old  men  will  die.  I've  been  out  there,  George, 
and  wounded.  I  did  all  I  could  and  stood  all  I  could ;  I'm  en- 
titled to  tell  people  what  I  conceive  to  be  their  duty  to  man- 
kind— infinitely  better  entitled  than  when  we  chopped  ethics 
at  Lake  House."  His  excited  voice  grew  husky.  "You  mustn't 


438  SON  I A 

put  a  match  to  me  yet,  George.  I'm  as  right  as  can  be,  but 
I — I — any  arguing  makes  me  so  tired.  And  I  haven't  had  time 
to  think  anything  out  yet." 

Before  leaving  for  the  Admiralty  I  made  him  promise  to 
telegraph  as  soon  as  he  arrived  at  Melton,  and  it  is  perhaps 
superfluous  to  add  that  for  a  fortnight  I  had  no  news  of  him, 
and  that  only  a  letter  from  my  cousin  Laurence  apprised  me 
of  his  continued  existence. 

"Mv  DEAR  GEORGE," — it  ran, — "Your  fiver  was  as  welcome 
as  it  was  unexpected.  I  thought  the  family  had  been  broke  by 
the  war.  This  place  is  much  the  same  as  usual,  but  an 
awful  lot  of  our  chaps  have  been  killed — fellows  who  were 
monitors  when  I  was  a  fag.  Two  of  our  dons  have  left  and 
taken  commissions.  They  were  after  your  time,  though. 

"Burgess  worked  off  one  of  his  pet  surprises  on  the  first 
day.  He  gave  out  after  Call-over  that  Villiers  would  run  the 
Army  Class  and  the  Under  Sixth  would  go  to  a  fellow  called 
O'Rane — an  old  Meltonian.  I  don't  know  what  reputation  the 
form  had  in  your  immoral  youth,  but  we're  regarded  as  rather 
playful  now,  so  it  seemed  only  fair  to  let  the  new  man  see  us  an 
naturel,  as  the  French  say.  Besides  we  all  felt  it  was  up  to  us 
to  see  what  sort  of  a  fellow  he  was,  and  how  much  he  knew 
about  the  place. 

"Quo  jam  constitute,  as  they  say  in  Latin,  we  strolled  in 
half  an  hour  late  and  gave  him  a  very  fine  'Good  morning, 
sir! — welcome  to  Melton!'  in  chorus.  He  just  bowed  and  said 
'Good  morning,'  and  lay  back  in  his  chair.  Funny  looking 
fellow — very  thin — with  black  hair  and  great  black  eyes  that 
made  him  rather  like  a  panther.  Everybody  calls  him  the 
Black  Panther  here. 

"Quibus  factis,  which  things  having  been  done,  he  wanted 
our  names  and  ages  and  told  us  to  arrange  ourselves  in  alpha- 
betical order.  Of  course  that  was  simply  asking  for  trouble. 
Half  the  fellows  gave  their  Christian  names  and  the  other  half 
didn't  know  whether  W  came  before  V,  and  we  fell  over  each 
other  and  there  was  no  end  of  a  shindy.  I  thought  we  should 
bring  Burgess  up.  Suddenly  the  Panther  sprang  up  and  gave 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          439 

tongue.  It  was  rather  like  cutting  a  sheet  of  ice  with  a  piece  of 
forked  lightning — if  you  take  my  prettj  meaning.  'Gentlemen, 
I  dislike  noise.  It  is  one  of  my  many  peculiarities,  all  of  which 
you  will  have  to  learn.  I  never  speak  twice  and  I  am  never 
disobeyed/  My  hat !  I  should  think  he  wasn't !  We  saw  we 
were  up  against  something  rather  stiff  and  we  all  remembered 
our  names  and  ages  in  surprisingly  quick  time.  He  didn't 
bother  to  write  'em  down — just  listened  and  repeated  'em  out 
of  his  head.  Then  he  arranged  the  books  we  were  to  read  this 
term  and  then  he  got  on  to  the  holiday-task.  I  don't  mind 
telling  you  it  was  a  bad  moment,  George.  Not  one  of  us  had 
opened  a  book,  and,  though  that  wouldn't  have  mattered  with  a 
mentally  deficient  like  dear  old  Villiers,  the  Panther  had  shown 
his  teeth.  He  asked  what  the  book  was,  and  Jordon  told  him 
it  was  'Roman  Society  under  the  Later  Empire.'  'Has  any- 
body looked  at  it?'  asked  the  Panther.  There  was  the  usual 
pin-dropping  silence  that  you  read  about  in  the  parish  magazine 
serials.  Then  the  Panther  smiled,  and  I  could  see  he  was  the 
sporting  variety.  He  said,  'I  understand  from  the  Headmaster 
we  have  two  and  a  half  hours  in  which  I  examine  the  extent  of 
your  knowledge.  The  allowance  errs  on  the  side  of  generosity. 
How  are  we  to  employ  our  remaining  two  hours?" 

"Well,  Reynolds  asked  him  to  tell  us  about  the  school  when 
he  was  here,  and  Carter  invited  him  to  read  to  us.  He  said  he 
wouldn't  read,  but  we  might  talk  to  him,  and  he  would  choose 
the  subject.  It  didn't  sound  particularly  exciting,  and  I  thought 
he'd  done  the  dirty  by  us  when  we  got  back  to  his  old  'Roman 
Society.'  It  was  rather  alarming ;  he  looked  up  to  the  ceiling  and 
said,  'Nobody  knows  why  the  Roman  Empire  fell.  What  are 
your  views,  Marjoribanks  ?'  Margy  had  a  shot  and  broke 
down,  and  two  or  three  other  chaps  did  the  same,  and  then  the 
Panther  weighed  in.  It  was  an  amazing  performance,  George  ; 
I've  never  heard  a  fellow  use  such  marvellous  language — all 
perfectly  natural.  He  wandered  about,  five  centuries  at  a 
stride,  from  continent  to  continent.  He's  been  everywhere. 
We'd  got  to  the  Mexican  Aborigines  when  the  bell  went.  He 
told  us  we  could  go,  but  I  wanted  to  hear  some  more,  so  I  sug- 
gested we  should  lump  the  break  and  go  straight  on.  We  had  a 


440  SONIA 

vote  on  it,  and  my  motion  was  carried  nem  con.  He  started 
again  like  a  two-year-old,  and  we  tripped  along  from  the  mar- 
riage customs  of  the  Andaman  Islanders  to  Single  Chamber 
Government  in  Costa  Rica.  Then  he  stopped  dead.  'Oak- 
leigh!'  I  jumped  up — 'Yes,  sir!'  'We  have  now  got  to  the 
constitutional  devices  of  the  Central  American  Republics.  We 
started  with  the  decadence  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Find  your 
way  back.' 

"George,  old  son !  It  was  an  awful  thing  to  do,  but  with 
a  little  help  I  floundered  through  and  out  the  other  side.  'Now 
you'll  never  forget  anything  you've  heard  to-day,  will  you?' 
asked  the  Panther.  I  preserved  a  modest  silence,  and  then,  for- 
tunately, the  second  bell  went. 

"We  were  all  going  out  when  he  called  me  back  and  charged 
me  with  being  related  to  you.  I  admitted  it.  'Did  you  get  your 
fiver?'  he  asked.  'How  did  you  hear  about  it,  sir?'  I  said.  It 
was  in  my  pocket  at  the  time.  'You're  indebted  to  me  for  that,' 
he  said.  'And  when  you  write  to  thank  George  for  it,  don't  for- 
get to  tell  him  exactly  what  you  think  of  me.  It'll  amuse  him 
and  save  me  a  letter.  Now,  if  you  can  spare  a  moment,  will 
you  pilot  me  to  the  Cloisters?' 

"He  linked  arms,  and  we  started  out  of  his  room,  but 
coming  into  Great  School  I  cut  the  corner  too  fine  and  sent 
him  against  the  Birch  Table.  I  was  frightfully  apologetic  and 
all  that  sort  of  thing,  but  he  only  said,  'It's  my  fault,  I  ought  to 
have  told  you  that  I'm  blind.'  George,  that  absolutely  bowled 
me  over.  You're  a  swine  for  not  telling  me  he  was  coming,  and 
doubly  a  swine  for  not  warning  me  about  the  other  thing.  I 
dropped  his  arm  and  stared  at  him.  I'd  never  seen  anybody 
less  blind.  I  murmured  something  about  'Jolly  bad  luck,  sir!' 
He  just  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  said,  'Whom  therefore  ye 
ignorantly  worship,  him  declare  I  unto  you.  You  call  it  luck, 
I  call  it  destiny.' 

"As  soon  as  I'd  taken  him  to  his  rooms,  I  hared  back  to 
Great  Court  and  caught  hold  of  our  fellows.  They  were  all 
discussing  him,  but  I  shut  them  up  and  told  them  what  I'd 
found  out.  Findlay  just  said  in  his  terse  way,  'My  God !'  and 
after  that  there  didn't  seem  much  to  add,  till  Welby  remarked, 


AMID  THE  BLAZE  OF  NOON          441 

'I  wish  we'd  known  that  before  we  tried  to  rag  him.  I  vote  we 
apologize.'  No  one  raised  any  objection,  so  Jordan,  as  head  of 
the  form,  wrote  out  a  crawling  note,  and,  as  everybody  seemed 
to  think  I  knew  him  best,  I  was  told  off  as  postman.  When  I 
got  to  his  rooms,  he  said,  'A  note  ?  I  shall  have  to  ask  you  to 
read  it  to  me/  And  when  I'd  read  it,  he  smiled  and  said, 
'Thank  you.' 

"We  haven't  ragged  him  much  since  then.  After  all,  any 
chap  who  can  take  a  form  in  Homer  for  an  hour  and  a  half 
without  a  book  is  a  bit  out  of  the  ordinary.  Has  he  always 
been  blind,  or  is  it  something  new  ? 

"Well,  George,  I've  spent  three-quarters  of  prep,  writing 
to  you,  and  if  I  go  on  any  longer  there  will  be  wailing  and 
gnashing  of  teeth  in  first  school  to-morrow.  The  Panther 
will  be  responsible  for  the  teeth-gnashing  stunt.  He — the 
Panther — is  very  keen  on  your  coming  down  here  when  you 
can  spare  time  from  piling  up  battle-cruisers  on  sunk  reefs  or 
whatever  your  function  at  the  Admiralty  is.  If  you  go  over 
to  Ireland  at  any  time,  tell  the  mater  I'm  working  very  hard  and 
giving  the  Panther  every  satisfaction.  Tell  her  also  that  ac- 
cording to  the  papers  the  cost  of  living  has  gone  up  over  forty 
per  cent.  I  shan't  send  love  to  Uncle 'Bertrand,  because  I  don't 
think  he  can  stand  me  as  a  gift,  but,  if  Jim  comes  home  on 
leave,  you  can  give  him  a  fraternal  shake  of  the  hand  from  me, 
and  tell  Vi  to  write  here  more  regularly.  I  am  her  brother, 
even  if  she  is  a  rotten  Scotch  marchioness.  A  bas  les  aristo- 
crats! A  la  lanterne! — Ever  yours  (I  did  thank  you  for  the 
fiver,  didn't  I?), 

"LAURENCE  NEAL  GERALDINE  HUNTER-OAKLEIGH." 

I  do  not  see  that  my  cousin's  letter  calls  for  comment. 


CHAPTER   XI 

WATCHERS   FOR   THE  DAWN 


If  you  can  make  a  heap  of  all  your  winnings 
And  risk  them  on  one  turn  of  pitch  and  toss 

And  lose,  and  start  again  at  your  beginnings, 

And  never  breathe  a  word  about  your  loss    .    .    ." 

RUDYARD  KIPLING,  "If." 


ON  the  25th  May  a  Coalition  Government  replaced  the 
old  Liberal  Ministry  under  which  I  had  served  four 
years.     A  few  people  welcomed  the  change  in  hope 
that  the  direction  of  the  war  would  be  more  vigorous  and  far- 
sighted.     Most  of  the  men  I  met  condemned  the  new  depar- 
ture, and  the  detached  critics  at  the  Club  showed  endless  fer- 
tility in  the  inferences  they  drew  and  the  tendencies  they 
traced. 

O'Rane  had  gone  to  Melton  at  the  end  of  April,  and  my 
uncle  and  I,  dropping  back  into  our  former  mode  of  life,  saw 
more  of  each  other  than  when  we  had  had  a  guest  to  enter- 
tain. The  outbreak  of  war  had  infused  a  strong  spirit  of 
party  loyalty  into  Bertrand,  and,  as  the  clouds  of  destructive 
criticism  gathered  round  the  doomed  head  of  the  Government, 
there  was  hardly  a  theory  or  rumour  too  extravagant  for  him 

442 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          443 

to  embrace.  I  remember  his  fiery  indignation  when  the 
Coalition  idea  was  first  canvassed.  At  one  moment  the  Op- 
position had  broken  the  party  truce  and  was  being  silenced 
by  having  its  mouth  filled  with  plunder:  at  another  malcon- 
tent Liberal  Ministers  were  clearing  a  way  to  the  throne  with 
the  aid  of  assassins  suborned  from  the  enemy.  The  con- 
spiracy— and  as  public  nerves  wore  thin,  conspiracies  multi- 
plied— in  either  case  was  worked  out  in  minute  and  convincing 
detail  with  chapter  and  verse  to  support  every  count  in  the 
indictment.  I  find  it  unprofitable  even  to  discuss  his  theory, 
because  a  generation  must  elapse  before  the  essential  diaries 
and  memoirs  are  made  public ;  and  there  will  be  enough  guess- 
work and  enough  errors  of  recollection  to  correct  even  then. 
Also,  I  feel  there  will  be  a  colourable  pretext  for  revolution 
when  the  troops  come  home,  if  a  hundreth  part  of  the  charges 
be  proved  to  be  based  on  truth. 

Apart  from  the  rank  and  file  Liberals  who  felt  the  ground 
had  been  cut  from  under  their  feet,  the  commonest  view  was 
that  the  Coalition  was  a  London  journalistic  triumph,  desired 
of  no  man  but  foisted  on  the  country  by  large  headlines  and 
hard  leader-writing.  Erckmann  took  me  on  one  side  in  the 
smoking-room  at  the  Club  and  laid  his  heart  bare  for  my 
inspection.  (His  intricate  and  far-reaching  business  interests 
had  somehow  stopped  short  of  newspaper  proprietorship ;  and 
the  'Sentinel/  bantering  him  on  his  change  of  name,  had  harped 
with  needless  insistence  on  the  wisdom  of  interning  naturalized 
aliens.)  In  Erckmann's  eyes,  the  Coalition  was  the  latest  thrill 
of  a  sensation-mongering  Press.  "These  journalists  aren't 
a  Mudual  Admiration  Zociety,  hein?  They  live  by  addag. 
Liberal  Government  no  use:  zed  ub  a  Coalition.  Coalition  no 
good ;  zed  ub  a  digdador,  hein  ?  Digdador  no  good,  zed  ub  a 
Liberal  Government.  Always  addag,  addag.  We're  doo  long- 
suffering,  we  English.  If  you  pud  one  or  doo  edidors  againsd 
a  wall,  pour  encourager  les  audres,  hein?" 

My  own  explanation  of  the  change  is  founded  in  part  on  a 
study  of  collective  psychology,  in  part  on  a  certain  familiarity 
with  the  House  of  Commons.  Democracies  are  volatile  and 
over-suceptible  to  panic,  disappointment  and  desire  for  punish- 


444  SONIA 

ment.  Erckmann's  estimate  of  tte  English  was  so  far  wrong 
that  the  Government's  chief  difficulty — from  the  declaration 
of  war,  through  the  strikes  and  drink  problems  to  the  cry  for 
all-round  compulsion — lay  in  its  unillumined  ignorance  how 
far  it  could  go  without  arousing  uncontrollable  opposition. 

The  Coalition  came  because  Democracy  was  vaguely 
restless  and  desirous  of  change.  The  long  winter  agony  of 
the  trenches  was  borne  in  the  hopes  that  spring  would  see 
a  general  advance,  Germany  thrust  back  to  the  Rhine,  the 
beginning  of  the  end.  Neuve  Chapelle  showed  that,  thanks 
to  apathetic  organization,  the  war  might  be  expected  to  con- 
tinue at  least  another  year.  Democracy  showed  itself  dis- 
appointed and  angry.  What  was  the  good  of  a  soldier  at  the 
War  Office  if  this  kind  of  thing  happened? 

"Something  is  wanted,  there  needeth  a  change."  The 
whisper  made  itself  heard  in  Whitehall,  and,  be  it  through 
policy,  fear  or  intrigue,  the  Coalition — desired  and  loved  of 
none — was  brought  to  birth.  "I  suppose,"  said  my  uncle 
some  months  later  when  his  bitterness  had  abated,  "it  was 
the  only  alternative  to  shutting  down  the  House  of  Commons. 
We've  all  been  brought  up  on  party  lines,  and  it  takes  more 
than  a  war  to  deafen  you  to  the  pleadings  of  a  Whip.  More 
than  a  Coalition,  for  that  matter,"  he  added  gloomily. 

So  the  portfolios  were  shuffled,  salaries  pooled  and  every- 
thing went  on  as  before.  Erckmann's  "sensation-mongers," 
after  attacking  everyone  else,  turned  to  rend  the  few  remain- 
ing figures  they  had  set  on  pedestals  the  previous  August. 
The  Foreign  Office  was  attacked  for  failing  to  counteract  the 
effects  of  the  Press  campaign  in  Europe :  the  creator  of  the 
modern  British  Army  was  driven  from  office  for  not  quin- 
tupling the  size  of  that  army  (I  sat  in  the  House  through 
those  dreary  years  when  we  lisped  in  terms  of  small  holdings 
and  cheered  every  penny  saved  on  the  Estimates)  :  and  that 
soldier  whom  the  Press  had  violated  constitutional  practice 
to  place  in  charge  of  the  War  Office,  was  given  press-notice 
to  go  because  the  war  was  still  unfinished  and  the  stock  of 
victims  was  running  low. 

I  remember  looking  back  on  the  first  six  months  of  the 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          445 

war  with  its  upheaval  of  ideals  and  standards  and  habits  of 
life:  I  recalled  my  feeling  in  August  that  nothing  would  ever 
be  the  same  again.  And  in  May  I  was  to  find  that  politics  and 
journalism  had  so  eaten  their  way  into  our  being  that  even 
the  scalpel  of  war  failed  to  dislodge  them.  Unborn  To- 
morrow must  curb  its  Press  or  educate  itself  into  inde- 
pendence of  it. 

While  the  Coalition  was  still  a  conjecture  and  occasion 
for  blaspheming,  my  uncle  announced  his  intention  of  retiring 
from  politics  and  making  over  to  me  the  reversion  of  his  seat. 
As  I  had  done  no  work  for  the  party  since  my  defeat  in  1910 
it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  his  nomination  would  have 
been  endorsed  in  the  Whip's  Office,  but  in  any  case  I  had 
neither  time  nor  strength  to  sit  in  the  Admiralty  by  day  and 
the  House  by  night.  Such  leisure  as  I  could  find  was  already 
double  mortgaged.  I  spent  my  Sundays  at  Bertrand's  hospital, 
and  my  evenings  in  entertaining  officers  on  leave  or  trying  to 
keep  in  touch  with  friends  who  seemed  to  have  been  caught 
up  into  another  and  busier  world  since  the  outbreak  of  war. 

It  was  half  way  through  May  when  my  cousin  Violet 
crossed  from  Ireland  with  her  mother  and  took  up  her  resi- 
dence in  Loring  House.  Her  confinement  was  expected  to  take 
place  early  in  July,  and  by  moving  to  London  she  hoped  to  see 
more  of  her  husband  when  his  three  times  deferred  leave  was 
granted.  Old  Lady  Loring  and  Amy  come  down  from  Scot- 
land to  get  the  house  ready  and  keep  her  company,  and,  as 
soon  as  I  could  find  a  free  evening,  I  called  round  to  see  them 
and  give  Violet  the  message  contained  in  her  brother's  letter 
from  Melton. 

Loring  was  writing  regularly  and  in  good  spirits  at  this 
time:  the  life  suited  him,  he  was  in  perfect  health,  and  his 
company  was  the  finest  of  any  army  in  the  world.  He  had 
been  given  his  fair  share  of  fighting,  promoted  to  the  rank 
of  captain,  and  had  taken  part  in  the  advance  to  Neuve 
Chapelle — a  circumstance  which  he  never  ceased  to  deplore, 
as  it  involved  the  exchange  of  a  trench  "with  all  the  comforts 
of  home"  for  one  for  which  he  looked  in  vain  for  a  good  word 
to  say. 


446  SONIA 

When  I  got  up  to  go  that  night,  Violet  came  with  me  to  the 
head  of  the  stairs  and  confided  to  me  that  she  had  a  favour 
to  ask. 

"I  want  you  to  go  to  the  War  Office,"  she  said.  "If  Jim's 
wounded,  or  ...  or  anything,  they'll  send  a  telegram  to  me. 
I  want  you  to  arrange  to  have  it  sent  to  you.  For  the  next 
six  weeks  I'm  simply  going  to  vegetate.  I  shall  write  to  Jim, 
of  course,  and  if  he  writes  to  me  I  shall  read  his  letters.  If 
he  doesn't,  I  shall  try  not  to  worry."  She  slipped  her  arm 
through  mine.  "You  see,  George,  it's  everything  in  the  world 
to  me  now.  And  to  poor  dear  old  Jim.  I'm  doing  it  for  his 
sake,  too.  It's  all  I  can  do.  So  if  anything  does  happen  .  .  ." 

"Isn't  the  Dowager  the  right  person  to  take  this  on?"  I 
suggested.  "She  is  his  mother." 

Violet  shook  her  head. 

"She'd  tell  me.  Not  in  so  many  words,  but  I  should  see  it. 
And  the  same  way  with  Amy.  Say  you  will,  George." 

"I  will,  by  all  means." 

"Good  boy !  You'd  better  not  come  again  for  the  present. 
If  you  walked  in  one  evening  with  a  long  face  .  .  .  Amy '11 
ring  you  up  as  soon  as  there's  anything  to  report." 

"Whatever  you  think  best,  my  dear." 

I  kissed  her  good-night  and  started  to  walk  down  the  stairs. 
She  stopped  me  with  a  whisper. 

"George,  I'm  .   .  .  I'm  not  a  bit  afraid !" 

"Best  of  luck !"  I  said.    "Good  night !" 

Thereafter  for  some  weeks  Loring's  letters  continued  to 
come  with  fair  regularity,  but  there  were  times  when  he  had 
no  opportunity  of  writing,  and  I  had  no  difficulty  in  under- 
standing Violet's  self-denying  ordinance.  We  had  two  or 
three  scares  in  the  course  of  May  and  June — unexplained 
periods  of  time  when  no  word  came.  Then  a  hurried  scrawl 
would  tell  us  that  Loring  had  just  come  out  of  the  trenches 
and  was  resting  in  billets  behind  the  lines — "no  time  to  write 
the  last  day  or  two,  and  no  news  even  if  the  censor  let  it 
through.  You  know  much  more  about  the  war  than  we  do." 
And  then  we  could  all  breathe  more  freely. 

One  such  interval  of  suspense  came  to  an  end  on  June  the 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          447 

25th.  I  remember  the  date,  if  for  no  other  reason,  because 
it  was  my  uncle's  birthday.  He  had  ordered  his  will  to  be  sent 
round  from  the  solicitor's  and  spent  several  hours,  pencil 
in  hand,  drafting  alterations  and  working  out  elaborate  calcula- 
tions in  the  margin.  After  dinner  he  returned  to  his  task, 
and  I  was  settling  down  to  letter-writing  when  he  suddenly 
said: 

"Will  you  feel  aggrieved,  George,  if  I  leave  you  out  of  this 
thing?" 

"Not  in  the  least,"  I  said.     "As  I  never  expected " 

"Oh,  nonsense !  We've  lived  together  for  years,  and  I 
never  could  find  anyone  to  do  that  before.  They're  all  afraid 
of  me,  think  I'm  going  to  bite  their  heads  off.  I  had  put  you 
down  for  everything  and,  if  you  think  you're  being  shabbily 
treated,  I  won't  alter  the  thing." 

"I've  really  got  as  much  as  I  need,"  I  answered. 

He  nodded  without  looking  up. 

"Then  the  books  and  oddments  will  come  to  you,  and  the 
money  will  go  to  David." 

"He'll  refuse  it,  Bertrand,"  I  said. 

My  uncle  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "He  must  please  him- 
self— as  I  am  pleasing  myself.  Other  things  apart,  I  couldn't 
die  and  leave  his  father's  son  .  .  .  George,  I'm  not  comfort- 
able about  the  boy." 

"Why  not?" 

"I  always  think  that  blindness  is  one  of  the  few  excuses 
for  suicide,"  Bertrand  answered. 

"I'll  go  down  for  the  week-end  and  see  him,  if  you  like," 
I  said. 

Reaching  for  a  telegraph  form,  I  was  beginning  to  write 
when  a  maid  entered  and  handed  me  a  buff  envelope.  I  read 
the  contents  and  passed  them  over  to  my  uncle. 

"There  is  no  answer,"  I  told  the  maid. 

The  Secretary  of  State  for  War  "regretted  to  inform"  me 
that  Captain  the  Marquess  Loring  was  reported  as  "missing." 

"He's  only  missing,  George,"  said  Bertrand  gently,  laying 
his  hand  over  mine  on  the  table. 


448  SONIA 

"Isn't  that — rather  worse?"  I  asked,  but  B<vtrand  had 
crept  away  to  leave  me  undisturbed. 

I  got  away  from  the  Admiralty  early  on  the  Saturday 
afternoon  and  reached  Melton  at  four.  In  the  disturbance  of 
the  previous  evening  I  had  forgotten  to  complete  my  telegram, 
and  it  seemed  prudent  to  leave  my  luggage  at  the  station  until 
I  had  found  out  whether  O'Rane  could  take  me  in  for  the 
week-end.  I  had  won  clear  of  the  town  and  was  half-way 
to  the  school  when  I  heard  my  warne  called  and  looked  up  to 
find  Lady  Dainton  driving  with  a  break-load  of  convalescent 
soldiers. 

"Are  you  coming  to  see  us?"  she  asked. 

"Eventually,"  I  said. 

"If  you  can  find  room  inside,"  said  Sonia  from  the  box- 
seat,  "we  can  drive  you  home  in  time  for  tea." 

I  wanted  a  word  with  Sonia  privately,  so  I  suggested  that 
she  and  I  should  walk  the  rest  of  the  way. 

"We  shall  be  frightfully  late,"  she  said  dubiously  as  she 
descended  from  the  box.  Her  rest-cure  was  doing  her  little 
good,  to  judge  from  her  hollow  cheeks  and  the  dark  rings 
round  her  eyes. 

"Never  mind,"  I  said.  "Right  away!  I  say,  Sonia,  I'm 
a  bird  of  ill-omen." 

"What's  the  matter?"  she  asked  anxiously. 

"A  friend  of  mine  is  missing — a  friend  of  Raney  and  of 
us  all.  I  was  on  my  way  to  the  school  when  you  overtook  me." 

Sonia  had  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the  road  and  was  look- 
ing at  me  with  her  big,  beseeching  eyes. 

"You  don't  mean — Jim?"  she  said. 

I  nodded. 

She  gave  a  half  sob.  "Oh,  poor,  poor  Violet !"  And  then, 
with  the  calmness  that  everyone  seemed  to  acquire  in  the 
terrible  first  months  of  the  war,  "When  did  you  hear  about 
it?" 

"Last  night.  Violet's  not  to  be  told  till  after  the  child's 
born.  I  felt  Raney  ought  to  know — he  was  our  greatest 
friend." 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          449 

We  walked  the  best  part  of  a  mile  in  silence.  Then  Sonia 
said,  "You  were  coming  to  tell  me  too  ?" 

"Certainly." 

"Thank  you."  Her  head  was  bowed  and  her  eyes  turned 
to  the  ground.  "I  don't  suppose  you  understand,  George. 
...  A  man  can't.  .  .  .  Oh,  there  was  so  much  I  wanted  to 
say !" 

"I  think  he  understood  everything,"  I  said,  taking  her 
hand.  "From  the  time  when  you  offered  him  your  good  wishes 
on  his  marriage." 

She  seemed  startled.    "He  told  you  about  that?" 

We  were  walking  through  country  that  to  me  was  steeped 
in  Loring's  personality— the  School  Cricket  Ground  where  he 
and  I  fielded  at  the  nets  as  fags — the  big  Brynash  Pond  where 
we  skated  in  the  long  frost  of  '94,  the  pavilion  in  the  South- 
ampton Road  that  marked  the  southernmost  limit  of  Junior 
Bounds  and'  skirting  the  forest  the  ribbon  of  white  road  along 
which  seniors  were  privileged  to  tramp  on  their  winter  walks. 

"You  haven't  been  to  the  school  yet,  have  you?"  asked 
Sonia. 

"Not  yet.  But  I  was  thinking  of  it  when  you  spoke.  I 
remember  walking  along  here  with  Jim  one  afternoon  in 
autumn.  It  was  Raney's  first  term.  We  tramped  through 
the  forest  and  up  the  hill  till  we  came  in  sight  of  the  milestone 
round  the  next  corner.  I  recollect  there  was  a  figure  seated 
on  it,  swinging  his  legs ;  and  as  we  got  nearer,  we  saw  it  was 
Raney.  We'd  thrashed  him  that  term  as  many  times  as  school 
rules  permitted,  and  here  he  was  calmly  defying  two  monitors 
of  his  own  house  by  dawdling  a  good  two  miles  out  of  bounds. 
Poor  boy! — there  were  tears  shining  on  his  eyelashes.  Yes, 
he  knew  it  was  out  of  bounds,  but  it  was  the  only  place  here- 
abouts where  you  could  smell  the  English  Channel,  and  some- 
times, if  you  were  lucky,  you'd  see  smoke  from  a  passing  ship, 
and  that  gladdened  the  heart  of  him.  I  remember  him  saying 
it,  with  a  brogue  that  he'd  heard  in  his  cradle  and  hardly  since. 
Then  without  warning  he  became  a  sardonic  little  spitfire, 
oozing  insubordination  at  every  pore  and  drawling  in  hideous 


450  SONIA 

hybrid  American.  'Guess  I'm  up  against  another  of  your  ever- 
lasting rules,  Loring.' " 

"What  did  you  say?"  asked  Sonia. 

"I  left  it  to  Jim.  They  seemed  to  understand  each  other, 
and  Jim  never  lost  his  temper,  though  I  must  say  Raney  was 
the  most  consummate  little  fiend  in  his  first  term  that  I've 
ever  met.  All  Jim  ever  said  was,  'Lonely  little  devil!'  He 
certainly  looked  it,  sitting  on  the  milestone." 

We  walked  on,  turning  over  old  memories,  until  we  were 
out  of  the  sweet,  heavy  pine  forest,  and  the  road  curved 
sharply  and  ran  downhill  to  Crowley. 

As  we  rounded  the  corner  a  giant  St.  Bernard  turned  his 
head  lazily  in  our  direction,  gathered  himself  together  as 
though  for  a  spring  and  raced  towards  us. 


II 


"It's  a  great  noise  ye're  making,  Jumbo,"  said  a  voice,  and 
I  saw  that  as  once  before  there  was  a  figure  on  the  milestone. 
"Quiet,  sir!  Where  are  your  manners?" 

The  attitude,  voice  and  very  tone  of  dejection  were  as 
I  remembered  them  once,  and  once  only,  sixteen  years  before, 
when — as  now — O'Rane  had  wandered  forth  to  hide  his  misery 
from  the  world. 

"I  shan't  tell  him  yet,"  I  whispered  to  Sonia,  instinctively 
stopping  short. 

She  nodded  her  approval. 

The  dog's  deep-chested  bark  had  turned  to  a  whimper  of 
joyous  welcome. 

"Don't  be  heeding  him,  madame,"  O'Rane  called  out. 
"He'll  not  hurt  you." 

Sonia  had  walked  on  a  few  steps,  but  at  sound  of  his  voice 
she  too  stopped.  Some  time  was  yet  to  pass  before  she 
appreciated  the  sightlessness  of  those  vivid,  commanding  eyes. 

"Raney!"  I  cried. 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          451 

He  slid  down  from  the  milestone  and  faced  us. 

"George !    what  brings  you  here  ?    It  was  a  woman's  step !" 

"I  was  walking  on  the  grass,"  I  explained.  "Sonia's  here. 
She's  taking  me  home  with  her  to  tea." 

He  pulled  off  his  hat  and  stood  with  outstretched  hand. 

"Why  don't  you  come  too  ?"  asked  Sonia. 

He  hesitated.    "I  must  be  getting  back  to  school,"  he  said. 

"Not  yet,"  I  urged.  "Saturday  afternoon?  I  came  down 
here  to  invite  you  to  take  me  in  for  the  week-end.  Come  on 
to  Crowley  Court,  and  we'll  walk  back  together." 

He  was  without  excuse  and  forced  to  accept. 

"Well,  why  not?"  he  asked  after  a  moment's  deliberation 
and  picked  up  his  ash-plant  from  the  roadside.  "Not  the 
first  time  we've  met  at  this  milestone,  George?" 

The  wind  was  blowing  from  the  south,  salt  and  wet. 

"You  can  still  smell  the  sea  from  here,"  I  said,  as  we  set 
out. 

"I  can  still  see  them,  two  a  minute,"  he  cried.  "The  grimy 
Cardiff  colliers,  and  the  P.  &  O.'s  swaggering  down  Channel 
as  if  they  owned  the  seas.  And  out  of  the  grey  into  the  blue 
of  the  Bay.  And  the  Rock  towering  over  you  one  morning. 
And  then  the  roar  of  the  quayside  in  Marseilles.  .  .  .  And 
those  parching  nights  and  days  in  the  Canal  .  .  .  Bombay, 
Colombo,  Singapur,  Hong-Kong,  Shanghai.  .  .  .  The  P.  &  O. 
sailings  are  like  an  ode  of  Keats.  Java  Sea,  China  Sea.  .  .  . 
Salt  and  sunshine  and  great  swampy  rivers  losing  themselves 
in  a  midnight  jungle.  .  .  .  The  rattle  of  the  derricks,  and  all 
the  cursing,  sweating  stevedores  in  their  rolling  lighters.  .  .  . 
The  Pacific  Coast  and  the  sweepings  of  God's  universe.  'The 
smell  of  goats  and  incense,  and  the  mule-bells  tinkling  through.' 
Put  me  near  tar  and  salt  or  the  throb  of  an  engine." 

He  stood  with  his  head  thrown  back  and  the  wind  playing 
through  his  hair,  once  more  five  thousand  miles  from  Melton. 
Sonia  looked  at  him  and  turned  away  with  lowered  eyes.  I 
slipped  my  arm  through  his,  and  we  walked  on,  idly  discussing 
the  latest  news  of  the  war. 

Crowley  Court  had  been  changed  out  of  recognition.  The 
bigger  rooms  were  turned  into  wards,  nurses  in  uniform  were 


452  SONIA 

hurrying  up  and  down  stairs,  and  there  were  groups  of  wound- 
ed soldiers  in  their  blue  overhalls  sitting  or  limping  about  the 
garden.  Twenty-five  new  patients  were  expected  that  night 
from  Southampton,  and  the  resources  of  the  house  were  being 
strained  to  breaking  point.  Lady  Dainton  with  a  mourning 
brassard  over  her  grey  dress  gave  us  tea  amid  alarums  and 
excursions  in  the  old  smoking-room. 

"Raney  and  I  had  better  make  ourselves  scarce,"  I  told 
Sonia,  as  her  mother  was  called  out  of  the  room  for  the  sixth 
time. 

"Let  me  just  talk  to  a  few  of  these  fellows  first,"  begged 
O'Rane.  "We  may  have  been  through  the  same  places." 

He  jumped  up  and  hurried  out  of  the  room  with  his  fingers 
through  Jumbo's  collar. 

"D'you  care  to  walk  back  part  of  the  way  with  us?"  I 
asked  Sonia. 

She  shook  her  head,  and  her  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

"He  doesn't  like  me  near  him.  Didn't  you  see?  He  never 
spoke  a  word  to  me  the  whole  way  coming  here.  George — " 
she  hesitated,  and  played  with  the  hem  of  her  handkerchief — 
"George,  is  it  true  he  refused  an  interpretership  on  the  staff?" 

"He  could  have  had  one,"  I  said. 

"Well,  when  he  went  into  the  ranks  .  .  ." 

"Sonia,  don't  try  to  take  all  the  troubles  of  the  world  on 
your  shoulders.  Frankly,  you  don't  look  as  if  you  could  stand 
much  more." 

She  lingered  for  a  moment  at  the  window,  looking  out  on 
to  the  lawn  where  O'Rane  was  sitting  cross-legged  on  the 
grass,  surrounded  by  soldiers.  Then  she  walked  to  the  door. 

"Say  good-bye  to  him  for  me,  George,"  she  said.  "I  have 
to  lie  down  before  dinner." 

I  smoked  half  a  pipe  and  went  into  the  garden.  The  con- 
versation on  the  lawn  was  abounding  in  historic,  blood- 
drenched  names — La  Bassee,  Ypres,  Neuve  Chapelle,  Fest- 
hubert;  the  men  talked  with  bright  eyes,  and  there  was  a 
flush  on  O'Rane's  thin  cheeks. 

"Is  it  time  to  go?"  he  asked,  as  he  felt  my  hand  on  his 
shoulder. 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          453 

"There's  a  fresh  lot  due,"  I  said. 

He  jumped  up  and  waved  a  hand  round  the  circle.  "Good- 
bye, you  chaps.  You've  bucked  me  up  no  end." 

"Good-bye,  sir !  Good-bye  !"  The  voices  rang  with  cordi- 
ality and  almost  drowned  the  "Poor  devil !"  that  fell  from  a 
man  with  one  arm  and  no  legs.  "Come  and  see  us  again,  sir." 

"I'll  try  to !    Now,  George,  I'm  ready." 

We  went  back  to  the  house  for  our  hats,  and  O'Rane  asked 
if  Lady  Dainton  was  to  be  found.  I  said  I  thought  she  had 
better  not  be  disturbed. 

"Sonia  sent  'good-bye'  to  you,"  I  added. 

"Then  we  may  as  well  start,"  he  said. 

Unless  you'd  care  to  speak  to  her  before  you  go?" 

He  picked  up  his  hat  and  whistled  for  the  dog. 

"At  her  present  rate  of  progress  it  may  be'your  last  chance, 
Raney." 

"What  the  devil  d'you  mean?"  he  demanded  fiercely. 

"She  thinks  she's  responsible  for  getting  you  wounded," 
I  told  him.  "She  thinks  you  went  into  the  ranks  and  chucked 
over  a  comparatively  safe  job.  ..." 

"On  her  account  ?" 

"Yes.    And  she's  breaking  her  heart  over  it.    Is  it  true?" 

He  stood  silent,  without  a  restive  face-muscle  to  give  me 
the  key  to  his  thoughts. 

"You  want  me  to  tell  her  it's  untrue?" 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

"Where  is  she?" 

I  led  him  upstairs  and  tapped  on  Sonia's  door. 

"May  Raney  come  in  and  say  good-bye  ?"  I  asked. 

Then  I  went  downstairs  again.  "I  shall  smoke  a  pipe  at 
the  milestone,"  I  called  up  to  him  from  the  hall. 

A  third  pipe  followed  the  second,  and  for  the  twentieth 
time  I  looked  impatiently  at  my  watch,  jumped  down  from 
the  milestone  and  gazed  down  the  dusty  road  in  search  of 
O'Rane.  It  was  past  seven  when  at  last  I  saw  him,  striding 
along  with  the  dog  at  his  side,  swinging  his  stick  and  appar- 
ently guiding  his  feet  only  by  the  flat  crown  to  the  road. 

"Hope  I  haven't  been  very  long,  George,"  he  apologized, 
as  he  drew  up  alongside. 


454  SONIA 

"It's  a  beautiful  evening  to  be  in  the  country,"  I  said, 
luxuriously  sniffing  the  warm  scents  of  the  evening  air. 

"The  may's  good,"  Raney  murmured  half  to  himself. 
"I'd  give  something  to  see  the  chestnuts  and  golden  rain." 
Then  he  linked  his  arm  in  mine.  "George,  you  oughtn't  to 
have  sent  me  back." 

"Why,  what's  happened  ?"  I  asked. 

I  could  feel  him  shivering. 

"Oh,  it  was  damnable,"  he  said.  "I  walked  in  with  the 
words,  'I've  come  to  say  good-bye,  Sonia.'  There  I  wanted 
the  thing  to  end,  and  I  held  out  my  hand  to  signifiy  as  much. 
She  took  it  and — kept  hold  of  it.  'D'you  know  those  are 
the  first  words  you've  spoken  to  me  to-day?'  she  said.  I 
suppose  she  was  right.  I  didn't  mean  to  be  rude.  She 
asked  me  why  I  went  into  the  ranks.  ..."  His  voice  sank, 
and  he  walked  for  fifty  yards  without  speaking.  "Well,  I 
was  broke,  George.  Of  course  I  could  have  started  again, 
but — my  God! — was  it  worth  doing?  ...  I  told  her  I 
wanted  to  get  recruits.  It  was  true,  George,  the  whole  thing 
was  real — even  that  nonsensical  meeting  at  Easterly.  The 
only  thing  in  life  then  was  to  get  men.  Men  and  more  men. 
.  .  .  And,  good  heavens,  officers  aren't  immune  from  burst- 
ing shells.  .  .  .  Then  I  said  good-bye,  and  she  told  me  Sam 
was  due  out  of  hospital  next  week,  and  would  I  come  over 
and  see  him." 

His  head  dropped  forward  so  that  his  face  was  hidden. 

"I  told  her  I  couldn't  meet  her  again.  Once  I'd  asked 
her  to  marry  me  and  now  I  thanked  God  she  hadn't.  .  .  . 
Then  she  crumpled  up.  Literally.  And  I  had  to  catch  hold 
of  her  to  keep  her  from  falling.  .  .  .  She  lay  there  sobbing 
.  .  .  and  I  could  feel  the  beat  of  her  heart.  'God  in  heaven !' 
I  said,  'd'you  think  I'd  see  you  married  to  a  blind  man?' " 

It  was  half-past  eight  when  we  reached  Melton,  and  as 
we  were  too  late  to  dine  in  Common  Room  I  sent  my  suitcase 
up  to  the  school  and  carried  O'Rane  off  with  me  to  the 
"Raven." 

"Bertrand  told  me  to  ask  if  you  were  going  to  keep  on 
your  seat  in  the  House,"  I  said  half-way  through  dinner. 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          455 

"I'll  give  up  nothing  !"  he  answered  defiantly.  "You  think 
I'm  going  to  let  this  make  any  difference  -  ?" 

"Apparently  you  told  Sonia  it  would.  In  your  place  I 
should  certainly  stick  to  it.  Four  hundred  a  year  -  " 

O'Rane  stopped  me  suddenly. 

"By  next  January  I  can  let  you  have  three  hundred  on 
account,"  he  said. 

"You'd  better  pay  it  back  direct,"  I  suggested.  "Two 
hundred  to  my  uncle,  who'll  be  mortally  offended  at  receiving 


"I  can't  help  that,"  he  interrupted  obstinately. 

"And  the  next  time  you  go  to  Crowley  Court  -  " 

"I'm  not  going  there  again,  George." 

"My  dear  Raney,  in  common  decency  you  must  I  When 
a  girl  sells  the  pearls  her  father  gave  her  when  she  came 
out  -  " 

"George  !" 

"And  things  from  her  dead  brother,  and  a  twopenny 
wrist-watch  -  " 

"George,  please  stop!"  He  sat  with  his  fists  pressed  to 
his  temples.  "I'd  have  sworn  it  was  Jim.  I  wrote  to  him 
a  fortnight  ago.  .  .  .  And  as  he  didn't  deny  it  .  .  .  " 

There  was  a  long  silence. 

"Perhaps  he  never  got  your  letter,"  I  said. 


HI 


We  walked  up  to  the  school  after  dinner  and  joined  the 
staff  at  dessert.  I  had  gone  to  Melton  to  break  the  news 
of  Loring's  disappearance  and  not  to  spy  the  incongruity  of 
O'Rane's  self-sought  surroundings,  but  I  left  without  touching 
on  the  subject  of  my  visit.  O'Rane  seemed  to  be  carrying 
as  much  sail  as  he  could  stand.  Being  a  Saturday  night  the 
masters  had  all  dined  in  Common  Room,  with  the  exception, 


456  SONIA 

of  course,  of  Burgess.  I  found  them  profiting  by  his  absence 
to  compare  the  ideal  way  of  running  a  great  public  school 
with  the  way  actually  adopted  at  Melton. 

So  long  as  a  regimental  mess  devotes  every  moment  of  its 
spare  time  to  discussing  regimental  politics,  so  long  as  three 
barristers  at  a  dinner-party  of  twenty-four  segregate  them- 
selves to  discuss  the  last  appointment,  so  long  as  Members 
of  Parliament  refight  in  the  Smoking-Room  the  battle  they 
have  just  left  in  the  Chamber,  I  suppose  it  is  not  surprising 
that  schoolmasters  should  widen  their  outlook  and  refresh 
their  minds  for  the  morrow  by  returning  to  the  chalk  dust 
and  ink  of  their  classrooms. 

The  criticism  of  Burgess  hung  on  a  peg  provided  by  one 
Vickers.  (I  shall  never  forget  his  name  and  some  day  per- 
haps I  shall  meet  him.)  It  seems  that  Vickers,  in  the  opinion 
of  his  form-master  Matheson,  was  ripe  for  super-annuation 
on  the  ground  that  he  knew  nothing,  learned  nothing  and 
was  only  being  injured  in  health  by  having  to  spend  his 
leisure  hours  in  detention-school.  Ponsonby,  in  whose  house 
Vickers  spun  out  his  unprofitable  existence,  disagreed  in  toto 
with  his  good  friend  Matheson.  Vickers  was  slow,  without 
a  doubt;  a  little  patience,  however  .  .  .  And  the  boy  was 
admirably  behaved.  And  there  must  be  something  in  the 
son  of  a  man  who  had  captained  Somerset.  I  was  given  to 
understand  that  the  chose  Vickers  had  been  under  discussion 
for  some  while  and  that  the  antagonists  only  agreed  in 
condemning  the  Head. 

Burgess,  it  seemed,  had  admitted  the  boy  five  years  be- 
fore on  the  strength  of  a  chance  conversation  on  early  Church 
music.  He  took  the  weak  line  that  Melton  might  do  Vickers 
good  and  that  Vickers  could  not  possibly  harm  Melton ; 
finally  he  was  believed  to  attach  less  than  no  importance  to 
Matheson's  reiterated  complaints  to  the  senior  Vickers  that 
their  son  admittedly  spent  evening  preparation  in  reading 
oratorio  scores.  On  this  last  point  Ponsonby  ventured  to 
say  that  he  paid  a  personal  visit  to  prep,  room  every  night 
and  could  only  say  that  he  had  never  discovered  Vickers  so 
employed.  Had  anyone  described  to  me  the  conversation 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          457 

of  that  Common  Room,  I  should  have  dismissed  his  account 
as  a  cruel  parody. 

Raney  had  walked  up  from  the  hotel  in  unbroken  silence, 
but  I  saw  him  gradually  awakening  to  the  sound  of  the 
Common-Room  talk,  where  four  conversations  were  always 
in  progress  at  once  and  no  one  waited  to  hear  what  his 
neighbour  had  to  say. 

"Send  him  to  O'Rane,"  suggested  Ponsonby.  "If  he 
can't  make  anything  of  him  .  .  .  Hallo,  Oakleigh,  where  have 
you  sprung  from?" 

"O'Rane  is  welcome  to  him,"  returned  Matheson.  "But 
you  may  remember  my  contention  was  that  this  is  a  school 
and  not  an  asylum." 

The  term  was  two-thirds  over,  and  I  will  make  all  allow- 
ances for  rawed  nerves.  But  there  was  still  a  note  of  pathos 
running  through  the  acrid  conversation.  Sixteen  years  had 
passed  since  I  last  entered  the  smoky  Common  Room  over  Big 
Gateway,  and  I  was  then  being  entertained  to  a  farewell 
dinner  by  men  who  seemed  to  shed  their  mannerisms  with 
their  gowns  and  become  suddenly  human.  In  the  interval  I 
had  wandered  about  the  world  and  tried  my  hand  at  many 
things ;  O'Rane  had  wandered  farther  and  made  more  ex- 
periments. Yet  the  Common  Room  was  hardly  changed: 
there  was  the  same  round  hole  in  the  carpet  by  the  fireplace ; 
the  horsehair  was  still  bursting  through  the  scorched  part 
of  the  largest  chair;  the  tongs,  still  in  two  pieces,  were  still 
used  as  pokers. 

The  men,  too,  were  hardly  changed.  Only  the  younger 
ones  came  and  went — some  to  headmasterships,  some  far 
away  from  scholasticism.  There  were  a  few  science  men,  im- 
ported grudgingly  by  Burgess  to  tend  the  growing  but  still 
suspect  Modern  Side ;  and  each  one  knew  his  neighbour  too 
well.  They  knew  their  work  too  well  and  had  corrected  the 
same  mistakes  too  long.  I  wondered  what  they  made  of 
O'Rane  and  he  of  them. 

As  Headmaster,  Burgess  stood  in  a  different  position; 
with  his  enormous  range  of  knowledge  he  would  always  be 
differentiated  from  his  fellows.  I  tried  to  see  him  that  night 


458  SONIA 

before  going,  but  he  was  engaged  with  the  Bishop  of  Mine- 
head,  who  was  preaching  in  chapel  next  day.  We  met,  how- 
ever, in  the  Cloisters  after  Roll  Call  while  I  was  waiting  for 
O'Rane  to  come  out  of  Early  School. 

"Behold,  I  have  prepared  my  dinner,"  he  said,  as  we 
shook  hands.  "My  oxen  and  my  fatlings  are  killed,  and  all 
things  are  ready." 

I  interpreted  his  words  as  an  invitation  to  breakfast  and 
asked  whether  I  might  bring  O'Rane. 

"Priests  and  Levites  sit  at  meat  with  me  this  day,"  he 
answered,  with  a  warning  glance  to  the  end  of  the  Cloisters 
where  the  Bishop  was  reading  the  inscription  on  the  South 
African  memorial.  "An  he  be  not  afraid.  .  .  .  Laddie,  doth 
thy  memory  hold  the  day  when  David  O'Rane  came  first 
among  us?" 

"I  went  in  fear  of  my  life,  sir,  for  the  first  term." 

"I,  too,  laddie,"  said  Burgess,  stroking  his  long  beard. 
"Cloven  tongues,  like  as  of  fire,  sat  upon  him,  and  he  prophe- 
sied with  strange  utterance,  saying,  'See  here,  Dr.  Burgess, 
I  propose  to  come  to  your  old  school  for  a  piece.  There's  my 
money,  every  last  dime.  When  that's  petered  out,  I  guess 
I'll  have  to  find  more.  When  do  you  start  anyway,  and  what 
are  the  rules  ?'  Laddie,  I  spake  a  word  here  and  a  word  there. 
It  was  not  good  for  a  babe  to  know  what  he  knew.  Yet  I 
would  not  fling  him  into  outer  darkness,  for  he  was  not  with- 
out valour." 

We  left  the  Cloisters  and  walked  into  the  sunlight  of 
Great  Court. 

"You  saw  him  when  he  came  back  from  France,  sir?"  I 
asked. 

Burgess  struggled  out  of  his  gown  and  threw  it  over  one 
shoulder. 

"Not  for  long  did  we  commune  together,"  he  said,  as  we 
walked  towards  Little  End.  "A  word  here  and  a  word  there. 
I  knew  little  but  that  one  of  my  young  men  was  come  back  to 
me  with  eyes  that  saw  not.  The  laddies  call  him  the  'Black 
Panther/  "  he  added. 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          459 

"So  my  cousin  tells  me.  How  did  you  find  that  out,  sir?" 
i  He  shook  his  head  vaguely. 

"I  am  an  old  man,  broken  with  the  cares  and  sorrows  of 
this  life,  yet — all  things  are  revealed  unto  me.  There  was 
turbulence  in  the  Under  Sixth  when  Plancus  was  Consul." 

"I  believe  there  was,  sir,"  I  admitted. 

Burgess  beckoned  with  one  finger. 

"Come  and  see,"  he  said. 

We  had  walked  round  from  Little  End  to  the  front  of  his 
house,  and  he  now  led  the  way  back  through  Big  Gateway, 
across  Great  Court  and  up  the  steps  into  Great  School.  The 
folding  doors  of  Under  Sixth  room  stood  open,  and  as  we 
approached,  a  boy  was  standing  up  reading  a  passage  of  Greek 
Testament;  O'Rane  stopped  him  at  the  end  of  the  chapter, 
and  the  construe  began. 

"How  does  he  manage  about  the  written  work?"  I 
whispered  to  Burgess. 

"It  is  read  aloud  to  him  and  he  does  not  forget,  Boy  is 
a  noble  savage,  laddie,"  he  remarked  reflectively,  looking  at 
the  still,  orderly  form.  "They  wot  not  that  the  High  Priest 
is  even  now  at  hand." 

We  walked  down  School  and  waited  in  Great  Court  for  the 
bell  to  ring. 

"It  was  hardly  the  end  I  pictured  for  Raney,"  I  said. 

"The  end,  laddie  ?"  Burges  echoed. 

The  bell  rang,  and  almost  immediately  a  wave  of  boys 
poured  headlong  down  the  steps  and  separated  to  their  houses. 
In  their  rear  came  O'Rane,  with  his  hand  on  the  shoulder  of 
my  cousin  Laurence. 

"Thus  grows  mankind's  ritual,"  Burgess  commented. 
"The  self-appointed  guardian  guards  still,  though  his  services 
be  no  longer  required."  He  called  my  cousin  to  him. 
"Laddie,  if  thine  house-master  grant  thee  leave,  I  pray  thee 
to  a  place  at  my  board." 

On  the  evening  of  my  return  from  Melton  I  called  at  the 
War  Office  to  inquire  for  news  of  Loring.  It  was  a  fruitless 
mission  that  I  had  to  repeat  every  day  that  week.  Sometimes 
I  varied  the  procedure  by  calling  at  Cox's  Bank  as  well,  but 


460  SONIA 

the  result  was  always  the  same.  On  the  Saturday  I  deter- 
mined to  call  at  Loring  House  and  prepare  its  inmates  for  the 
official  notice  that  I  had  not  been  able  to  intercept  on  its  way 
to  the  Press. 

"I  was  met  in  the  hall  by  Amy,  tremulous  with  excitement. 

"You  got  my  message?"  she  inquired. 

"I've  not  been  home." 

"My  dear,  it's  a  boy!  At  six  o'clock  this  morning.  I 
couldn't  get  hold  of  you  at  the  Admiralty,  so  I  sent  a  message 
to  Queen  Anne's  Mansions." 

"How's  Violet?"  I  asked. 

"Splendid.  They  both  are.  Everything  went  beautifully. 
She's  sleeping  at  present,  but  she  wants  to  see  you." 

"Isn't  it— rather  soon?"  I  asked. 

"It's  only  for  a  minute,  and  of  course  you  mustn't  excite 
her.  I  mentioned  in  my  message " 

"Amy,"  I  interrupted,  "how  long  is  it  since  you  heard 
from  Jim?" 

Her  eyes  grew  apprehensive. 

"You've  not  got  bad  news  of  him?" 

"I've  no  news  at  all." 

She  reflected  for  a  moment. 

"It  was  ten  days  ago.  We  haven't  heard  since  then,  but 
so  often  we  get  no  letter  for  a  week  or  so,  and  then  three  or 
four  come  together." 

"I  haven't  heard  either."  I  took  her  arm  and  walked  to  a 
settee.  "It's  possible  that  he's  missing,  Amy." 

"Missing?"  She  did  not  yet  take  the  word  in  its  special- 
ized sense. 

"It  doesn't  necessarily  mean  anything,"  I  said.  "Thou- 
sands of  'missing'  men  turn  up  again.  You  see,  if  you  get 
separated  from  your  company " 

Amy  covered  her  face  with  her  hands,  and  I  put  my  arm 
round  her  shoulders. 

"You  mustn't  meet  trouble  half-way,"  I  said.  "He  may 
be  as  right  as  I  am " 

"You  don't  think  that,  or  you  wouldn't  have  told  me," 
she  whispered. 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          461 

"I  told  you  because  you  may  see  his  name  in  the  papers 
any  day." 

Her  hands  dropped  into  her  lap,  and  she  gazed  across  the 
hall  to  the  staircase  as  if  she  expected  to  see  her  brother's 
tall  form  descending. 

"Jim — Jim — Jim !"  she  repeated  with  twitching  lips. 

"Nothing's  known  yet,  Amy,"  I  said.  "I  told  you  because 
I  wanted  you  to  help  me." 

Slowly  her  eyes  turned  and  met  mine  in  a  dazed  and  tear- 
less stare. 

"What  am  I  to  do?"  she  murmured. 

"We  must  think  of  Jim's  son,"  I  said.  "Keep  Violet 
utterly  in  the  dark  at  present.  Lie  to  her — anything  you 
like — invent  news  of  Jim.  She  mustn't  see  the  papers,  she 
mustn't  see  her  letters.  As  soon  as  he's  reported  missing  in 
the  papers  people  will  write  and  sympathize.  You  and  your 
mother  must  keep  up  the  play  till  she's  strong  enough  to  be 
told.  And  then  you  must  laugh  at  her  fears  as  I've  laughed 
at  yours.  Missing?  What  of  it?  With  millions  of  men 
stretching  over  hundreds  of  miles " 

The  dazed  expression  left  her  eyes,  and  her  steadiness 
of  voice  and  touch  as  she  laid  her  hand  on  mine  showed  me 
that  all  the  courage  of  her  soul  had  gone  forth  to  battle  and 
returned  triumphant. 

"What  do  you  think  yourself,  George?"  she  demanded. 

"It's  long  odds  against  any  man  now  out  there  returning 
with  a  whole  skin,"  I  said. 

She  stood  up  and  looked  slowly  round  the  great  hall, 
instinct  with  the  personality  of  its  owner.  No  word  passed 
her  lips,  but  it  was  the  most  eloquent  silence  I  have  experi- 
enced. 

"Come  upstairs  and  see  if  Violet's  awake,"  she  suggested. 
"He's  a  beautiful  boy." 

I  found  my  cousin  in  a  darkened  room,  leaning  back  on 
her  pillows,  weak-voiced  but  radiant.  She  pointed  one  hand 
to  the  far  side  of  the  bed,  where  a  nurse  stood  with  a  new- 
born child  in  her  arms. 

"James    Alexander    Erskine     Claverhouse-Moray,"    she 


462  SONIA 

whispered.  "Poor  mite!  it  isn't  fair  on  him.  Jim  wouldn't 
miss  any  of  them  out,  though." 

"If  I'm  to  be  one  of  his  godfathers,  I  shan't  allow  it," 
I  said.  "He  shall  be  Sandy,  plain  and  unadorned.  How  are 
you  feeling,  Vi?" 

"So  tired,  George !"  she  answered,  with  a  sigh.  "I  oughtn't 
to  be  seeing  you,  but  I  want  you  to  do  something  for  me. 
Will  you" — she  paused,  as  though  the  effort  of  speaking  hurt 
her — "will  you  tell  Jim  you've  seen  Sandy — plain  and  un- 
adorned ?" 

I  bent  down  and  kissed  her  forehead.  "Seen  him  and 
approved  of  him,"  I  said.  "I'll  write  to-night." 

"Oh,  send  him  a  wire." 

"I'll  wire,"  I  said.     "Good  night,  Violet." 

She  had  dropped  asleep  before  I  reached  the  door.  As  I 
walked  downstairs,  Lady  Loring  came  out  of  the  drawing- 
room  and  stood  waiting  for  me  by  the  stairhead.  Her  round 
face  was  as  placid  as  ever,  but  her  eyes  were  restless. 

"Amy  has  told  me  everything,"  she  said. 

I  bowed  without  speaking. 

"Would  you  prefer  to  tell  Violet,  or  shall  I?"  she  asked. 
"Perhaps,  as  Jim's  mother " 

"I  should  prefer  you  to  do  it,"  I  said,  "as  soon  as  you 
think  it's  safe." 

"Very  well.  As  regards  the  boy — I've  not  sent  any 
announcement  to  the  papers." 

"I  will  see  to  that,"  I  said. 

After  calling  at  the  offices  of  "The  Times"  and  "Morning 
Post,"  I  wrote  letters  to  ten  or  twelve  people  including  O'Rane 
and  Laurence.  Thinking  over  the  events  of  the  day  as  I 
walked  home  from  the  Club,  I  could  not  help  feeling  that  one 
of  the  hardest  things  to  bear  in  all  the  war  was  the  courage  of 
the  women. 

IV 

A  week  or  two  elapsed  before  I  received  any  acknowledge- 
ment from  Melton.  Then  my  cousin  wrote  a  letter  designed  to 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          463 

release  both  myself  and  O'Rane  from  obligations,  to  convey 
an  invitation  for  Speech  Day  and  as  long  afterwards  as  I 
could  spare  for  Raney's  tried  and  approved  spare  room,  and 
finally  to  impart  a  great  deal  of  such  miscellaneous  informa- 
tion as  my  cousin  thought  would  interest  me  or  seemed  suit- 
able for  treatment  by  an  epistolary  method  in  which  he  took 
considerable  pride. 


"This  is  awful  news  about  Jim,"  he  wrote.  "Though 
I  really  hardly  knew  him,  he  seemed  an  awful  good  sort — 
white  all  through.  The  Panther  says  I  haven't  gone  half 
far  enough.  It  was  an  awful  shock  for  him,  poor  chap.  I 
usually  roll  round  after  Early  School  on  my  way  to  breakfast, 
just  to  read  him  his  letters  and  the  headlines  in  the  paper. 
I  found  your  fist  staring  at  me,  so  I  told  the  Panther  and  read 
out  the  letter.  If  I'd  had  time  to  read  my  own  first,  I  might 
have  let  him  down  easier:  as  it  was,  I  was  frightfully  abrupt. 

"Well,  as  you  say,  there's  always  hope  until  they  de- 
finitely write  him  off.  It  does  seem  rotten  luck  on  Vi,  though. 
She  writes  a  fairly  cheery  letter  in  spite  of  all :  I  heard  from 
her  this  morning,  asking  me  to  be  godfather  to  the  kid. 

"I've  had  a  most  astonishing  time  here  since  last  I  wrote. 
I  was  coming  out  of  the  racquet  court  the  other  day  and  har- 
ing  along  through  the  rain  when  I  bumped  up  against  a  girl  in 
Big  Archway.  I  apologized  with  my  usual  pretty  grace  and 
was  hurrying  on  when  she  asked  me  the  way  to  the  Panther's 
rooms.  As  I  happened  to  be  going  there  myself  on  the  chance 
of  tea,  I  volunteered  to  show  her  the  way.  With  any  luck 
the  Panther  might  be  out,  and  then  my  theory  was  to  invite 
her  to  the  'Raven.'  It  would  have  been  worth  getting  sacked 
just  for  the  fun  of  it,  George.  She  was  some  beauty — like 
the  picture  of  Lady  Hamilton  dressed  as  a  Bacchante.  (If 
you  happen  to  remember  it,  and  if  I'm  thinking  of  the  right 
one,  the  thing  in  the  dining-room  in  Dublin.)  She'd  been 
walking  through  the  rain  and  wind  and  her  hair  was  shining 
with  the  wet,  and  there  was  little  baby  diamonds  on  her  eye- 
lashes. (Said  he  poetically.)  I — George,  my  life  is  blighted: 


464  SONIA 

I  fell  in  love  at  first  sight  of  her  eyes  (colour  dark  brown  and 
an  'out'  size)  and  at  the  sound  of  her  voice.  I  feel  I  could 
write  reams  of  bad  poetry  about  her.  You  should  have  seen 
me  doing  the  Walter  Raleigh  stunt  and  bagging  our  Mr. 
Matheson's  green  brolly  from  Common  Room  passage. 

"It  took  us  some  time  to  get  to  the  Cloisters,  as  I  led  her 
round  Big  School  by  a  Incus  a  non  short  cut  through  Chapel 
and  by  the  Baths.  However,  we  got  there  eventually,  and  I 
knocked  at  the  Panther's  door. 

"  That  you,  Oakleigh?'  "  he  asked. 

"  'Yes,  sir,'  "  I  said. 

"  'You're  just  in  time  to  make  tea.  The  water's  boiling. 
Come  along  in  and  shut  the  rain  out.'  " 

"  'A  lady's  called  to  see  you,  sir,' "  I  said ;  and  waited  for 
him  to  hand  out  hush-money. 

The  Panther  hardly  raised  an  eyebrow.  "Get  a  move  on 
with  the  tea,  then,"  he  said.  "What  have  you  done  with  her  ?" 

"  'I'm  here,  David,' "  answered  My  Dream.  Curse  him ! 
she  called  by  his  Christian  name! 

The  Panther  held  out  his  hand.  "I  didn't  expect  you  so 
soon,"  he  said. 

"  'I  got  your  letter  this  morning,* "  she  answered. 

"Well,  George,  the  whole  thing  seemed  a  put-up  job,  and 
I  quite  made  up  my  mind  to  warn  Burgess  how  his  young  men 
were  carrying  on.  I  poured  the  tea  out  and  handed  round  the 
food  and  was  just  making  for  the  door  when  the  Panther 
called  me  back. 

"  'Sonia,'  he  said,  'I  want  to  introduce  a  young  cousin  of 
George's.' 

"  'George  is  one  of  my  oldest  friends/  she  said.  (You 
old  devil,  you  never  told  me.  Never  mind,  she  called  me 
'Laurie'  before  we'd  finished.) 

"  'And  Miss  Dainton  is  one  of  my  oldest  friends/  said 
the  Panther.  'Sit  down  and  continue  to  preside  over  the 
meal.  I've  not  made  tea  since  the  days  when  I  was  your 
brother-in-law's  fag — eighteen  years  ago,  nearly/ 

"We  talked  a  bit,  and  I  poured  out  more  tea  and  handed 
more  food  and  then  I  made  another  attempt  to  go. 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN  465 

'  'You're  in  a  great  hurry,  Oakleigh/  said  the  Panther. 
'We've  bored  you,  I'm  afraid.' 

"  'No,  sir/  I  said,  'but  I  thought  you  and  Miss  Dainton 
might  want  to  talk.' 

'  'I  should  like  you  to  stay,'  he  said,  'Miss  Dainton  has 
called  to  see  these  rooms,  and  I  want  you  to  -show  her  round. 
There  is  a  question  whether  she  would  care  to  live  here.' 

"You  could  have  counted  me  out  over  that,  George.  He 
said  it  in  the  most  matter-of-fact  way,  standing  by  the  fire- 
place with  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  /  didn't  know  what  to 
say.  I  looked  at  her.  She  was  leaning  foward  with  her 
hands  round  her  knees  and  her  head  bent.  Her  eyes  were  full 
of  tears,  and  I  couldn't  make  out  if  she  was  frightfully  happy 
or  frightfully  miserable. 

'  'What's  your  view,  Oakleigh  ?'  he  asked. 
'  'I  .   .    .1  don't  know  yet,  sir,'  I  stammered.     It  was  a 
damned  unfair  question,  George. 

'  'We  were  engaged  when  I  was  sixteen,"  said  Miss  Dain- 
ton. 

'  'Well,  what  have  you  been  waiting  for  ?'  I  asked.  It 
was  awful  cheek,  but  it  slipped  out.  The  Panther  simply 
yelled  with  laughter. 

1  'Then — in  my  place,  Oakleigh  ?'  he  asked. 

"  'Rather,  sir !'  I  said.  I  was  warming  to  the  job.  I  had 
a  look  at  her,  but  she  didn't  seem  to  mind. 

"The  Panther  thought  it  over  for  a  minute.  Then  he 
sobered  down  and  said  very  quietly: 

"  'If  you  were  blind?' 

"  'It  doesn't  seem  to  make  any  difference  to  you,  sir,'  I 
said. 

"George  wasn't  that  a  perfectly  innocent  remark?  The 
Panther's  simply  amazing,  the  things  he  does.  However,  I 
seemed  to  have  said  the  wrong  thing.  He  clapped  his  hands 
to  his  eyes  as  though  he'd  been  stung,  and  I  could  hear  him 
whisper  under  his  breath,  'Oh,  my  God !' 

"I  weighed  in  with  the  most  abject  of  apologies,  and  he 
was  all  right  again  in  a  minute  and  turned  to  Miss  Dainton. 


466  SONIA1 

"  'Am  I  to  take  this  young  man  as  representative  of  the 
world  at  large,  Sonia?'  he  asked. 

"She  said  'Yes'  very  quietly. 

"  'Oakleigh  hasn't  shown  you  round  the  rooms  yet,'  he 
said.  'They're  nothing  very  much.  I  left  my  money  behind 
in  London,  and  a  slice  of  my  youth  the  far  side  of  the  Atlan- 
tic, and  my  sight  in  Flanders.  If  you  care  about  what's  left 
Sonia.  .  .  .I'm  not  half-way  through  my  life  yet.' 

"She  got  up  and  whispered  something  that  I  couldn't 
hear,  then  the  Panther  turned  to  me  and  held  out  his  hand. 
'Will  you  be  the  first  to  congratulate  me,  Oakleigh?  I  shall 
want  you  to  write  a  lot  of  letters  to-night.  One  to  George, 
and  another  to  your  sister,  and  any  number  more.  You  can 
tell  George  to  desert  from  the  Admiralty  and  come  down  here 
for  Speech  Day — and  as  long  as  he  can  stay  afterwards.  You 
can  tell  the  school,  too,  if  you  think  it'll  amuse  them.' 

"I  shook  hands  with  the  two  of  them  for  about  five  min- 
utes. They  were  simply  bursting  with  cheer.  I  wanted  to 
shout  or  make  a  speech  or  something,  but  all  I  could  do  was 
to  pump-handle  their  arms  up  and  down  and  burble  'Best  of 
luck !'  and  on  my  honour  I  slapped  the  Panther  on  the  back 
and  told  him  to  buck  up! 

"Never  in  my  life  did  I  feel  such  a  fool  as  when  it  was 
all  over.  I  got  away  as  soon  as  I  could  and  wandered  down 
to  the  baths.  About  an  hour  later  as  I  was  coming  up  to  prep, 
with  Majoribanks  we  caught  sight  of  the  Panther  and  Miss 
Dainton  starting  up  the  Crowley  Road.  I  mentioned  casually 
that  the  Panther  was  getting  married  and  that  I'd  been  having 
tea  with  them  and  that  she  struck  me  as  being  a  decent  sort 
of  girl.  I  didn't  go  into  details.  It  was  all  such  an  extraor- 
dinary business  that  I  knew  that  if  7  didn't  quite  get  the 
hang  of  it,  it  was  useless  to  look  to  a  chuckle-head  like  Margy 
for  light  and  leading. 

"You  know,  George,  I  don't  believe  they'd  have  done  it 
if  it  hadn't  been  for  me. 

"And  now  to  the  fascinating  task  of  turning  Marc  Antony's 
funeral  oration  into  Latin  Hexameters  for  the  benefit  of  our 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN  467 

Mr.  O'Rane.    If  he  gives  me  any  lip  about  them,  I  shall  tell 
him  that  she  called  me  'Laurie.' 

"The  cost  of  living  has  gone  up  again  since  I  thanked  vou 
for  that  fiver." 


CHAPTER  XII 


UNBORN  TO-MORROW" 

".     .     .     the  word 

Was  left  upon  your  unmolested  lips: 
Your  mouth  unsealed,  despite  of  eyes'  eclipse, 
Talked  all  brain's  yearning  into  birth." 
ROBERT  BROWNING, 
"Parleyings  with  Certain  People:  Gerard  de  Lairesse." 

OME  day,  George,  when  you  can  spare  the  time, 
I  should  like  you  to  write  a  little  memoir  .  .  ." 
Violet  paused  as  the  car  was  brought  to  a  standstill 
by  the  tide  of  traffic  at  Hyde  Park  Corner.  "For  Sandy, 
when  he  grows  up,"  she  went  on. 

We  were  in  the  last  week  of  July.  It  was  almost  my 
cousin's  first  day  out  of  doors,  and  she  looked  frail  and  sadly 
young  in  her  mourning.  Two  days  earlier  the  world  had  been 
informed  that  Captain  the  Marquess  Loring,  previously  re- 
ported missing,  was  now  reported  as  killed.  We  were  return- 
ing to  Curzon  Street  after  the  Requiem  Mass  at  the  Oratory. 

"You  knew  Jim  so  much  longer  than  I  did,"  she  resumed. 
"I  want  Sandy  to  know  what  he  was  like  at  school  and 
Oxford.  And  his  friends.  And  how  he  talked,  and  the  sort 
of  life  people  led  when  he  was  alive.  Sandy's  world  will  be  so 
different" 

468 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN  469 

"And  yet — it's  hardly  a  year  since  the  old  world  was 
blotted  out,"  I  said 

A  year  ago  we  were  all  at  Chepstow,"  she  murmured. 
"You  remember  the  news  coming?  ...  I  think  Jim  was 
happy,  but — we  weren't  long  together,  were  we?" 

The  car  slowed  down  and  came  to  a  standstill  before 
Loring  House. 

"May  I  stay  with  you  till  Amy  and  her  mother  come 
back?"  I  asked. 

"Please  do,"  she  answered,  as  she  stepped  out  of  the  car. 
Then,  as  we  walked  upstairs  to  the  drawing-room,  "George, 
I  never  thought  that  death  would  be  like  this.  It's  so — big. 
I  couldn't  have  cried  if  I'd  wanted  to.  I  don't  feel  I've  lost 
Jim.  I  feel  he's  nearer  me  than  ever  before.  I  shan't  see 
him,  but  he'll  be  there — there.  And  I  feel  I  must  try  to  do 
him  credit:  I  mustn't  fall  out  before  the  end.  Sandy  and  I. 
.  .  .  It'll  be  hard  for  Sandy  with  only  a  mother  to  bring  him 
up.  We  shall  want  you  to  help  us,  George." 

"In  any  way  I  can." 

"I  knew  you  would.  That's  why  I  asked  you  to  write 
the  memoir.  It  will  be  something  for  Sandy  to  live  up  to.  I 
want  you  to  put  in  everything.  Jim  was  never  mean,  but  any 
weaknesses  you  think  he  had — or  prejudices — or  silly  things 
he  did — I  want  them  all  in.  ...  George,  I  wonder  what  kind 
of  world  Sandy's  will  be?" 

"Of  Jim's  friends  only  Raney  and  I  are  left,"  I  said. 

"And  poor  Raney .  ..."    She  left  the  sentence  unfinished. 

"Why  pity  him?"  I  asked. 

"I  can't  help  it,  George." 

"Isn't  he  rather — big  to  pity?"  I  suggested.  "Pity  him 
by  all  means  if  we  get  no  new  inspiration  out  of  this  war.  If 
there's  to  be  nothing  but  a  wrangle  over  frontiers,  the  dis- 
cussion of  an  indemnity,  a  free  fight  for  stray  colonies,  a  fifty 
years'  peace,  even — it  wasn't  worth  sacrificing  a  single  life  for 
that.  We've  reached  the  twentieth  century  without  finding  a 
faith  to  inspire  it.  Some  one  has  still  to  preach  a  modern 
doctrine  of  humanity." 

The  following  night  I  went  down  to  Melton  for  the  week's 


470  SONIA 

holiday  that  the  Admiralty  was  giving  me.  It  was  the  eve 
of  Speech  Day,  and  my  train  was  filled  with  unmistakable 
parents.  Sonia  met  me  at  the  station  and  we  drove  up  to  the 
school  together.  Perfect  contentment  shone  in  her  brown 
eyes. 

"I  was  sorry  I  couldn't  get  to  the  wedding,"  I  said,  "but 
nowadays  one  is  hardly  master  of  one's  own  time.  Burgess 
married  you,  didn't  he?" 

She  nodded.  "In  Chapel.  And  Mr.  Morris  was  best 
man.  He  got  ninety-six  hours'  leave  for  it.  George,  I'm 
jealous  of  him  and  I  know  he  hates  me,  but  it  doesn't  matter. 
Nothing  matters  now.  We  did  the  whole  thing  as  furtively 
as  we  could — only  ourselves  and  mother  and  the  witnesses. 
It  was  supposed  to  be  a  deadly  secret,  but  when  we  came  out 
the  Corps  was  forming  a  guard  of  honour  down  to  the  Clois- 
ters, and  old  Lord  Pebbleridge  turned  out  the  hounds  in  Lit- 
tle End.  It  was  all  that  little  cousin  of  yours — including  the 
presentation.  .  .  .  George,  they  simply  worship  David 
here." 

"Do  you  wonder?"  I  asked. 

"I  call  that  a  silly  question,"  she  answered. 

There  was  little  room  to  spare  in  the  Junior  Bachelor 
suite  by  the  time  the  Junior  Bachelor  had  fitted  a  wife  and 
a  guest  into  the  mediaeval,  lancet-windowed  rooms  in  the 
Cloisters.  I  was  made  welcome  and  comfortable,  however, 
and  was  struck  by  the  revolutionary  changes  effected  by 
Sonia  in  the  fortnight  she  had  lived  there. 

Speech  Day  passed  off  uneventfully,  with  its  time-honoured 
ritual  unchanged.  Once  more  the  retiring  monitors,  standing 
face  to  face  with  Burgess  at  the  birch  table,  received,  reversed 
and  yielded  up  the  long  school  birch;  once  more  the  new 
monitors  were  handed  their  symbol  of  office.  Then  the  roll 
was  called,  a  diminutive  malefactor  publicly  birched  across 
the  back  of  his  hand,  and  we  returned  to  Chapel.  The  break- 
ing-up  service  had  already  taken  place,  but  honour  had  yet 
to  be  paid  to  the  dead.  In  a  voice  that  twice  quavered  and 
broke,  Burgess — for  thirty-eight  years  head  master  of  Melton 
— read  the  roll  of  those  who  had  fallen  in  the  war,  every  one 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN  471 

a  former  pupil  of  his  own,  and  seven-tenths  the  brothers, 
uncles  or  fathers  of  boys  now  in  the  school.  My  stall  was 
next  to  O'Rane's  and  his  hand  shot  out  and  gripped  mine 
when  Loring's  name  was  read  out  last  on  the  list.  With  a 
twisted  face  Burgess  pulled  off  his  big  horn  spectacles  and 
wiped  them,  while  the  organ  crashed  into  the  Dead  March. 

From  that  evening  we  had  all  Melton  to  ourselves.  The 
housemasters  stayed  on  for  a  couple  of  days  to  dispose  of 
their  reports,  then  collected  their  wives  and  children  and 
hastened  away  to  the  sea.  By  the  4th  of  August,  my  last 
night  there,  only  Burgess,  O'Rane  and  Sonia  were  left.  I 
remember  proposing  that  my  host  and  hostess  should  dine 
with  me  at  the  "Raven"  by  way  of  a  change,  but  O'Rane  told 
me  it  was  impossible,  as  Burgess  had  been  invited  to  take  pot- 
luck  with  us  in  the  Cloisters. 

"There  aren't  enough  arm-chairs  or  anything  of  that 
kind,"  he  said,  "but  you  can  perch  on  the  music-stool  and 
I'll  sit  on  the  floor.  And  I  doubt  if  we've  enough  knives  or 
plates,  but  nothing  matters  as  long  as  we  hurry  dinner 
through  and  let  the  old  man  get  back  to  his  pipe.  He  never 
knows  what  he's  eating  and  never  complains." 

At  eight  o'clock  the  slam  of  a  door  echoed  through  the 
desolation  of  Great  Court.  With  one  hand  smoothing  his  long 
white  beard  and  the  other  thrust  into  the  bosom  of  his  cas- 
sock, Burgess  strode  across  to  the  Cloisters,  hardly  pausing 
to  glance  at  the  opal  sky  or  the  creeper-clad  houses  around 
him,  their  crumbling  stone  white  and  warm  from  the  long 
afternoon's  sunshine. 

During  dinner  he  spoke  of  the  Germany  he  had  known 
before  the  Danish  war,  when  Bismarck  was  a  young  member 
of  the  Frankfurt  Diet,  and  the  callow,  revolutionary  Wagner 
lived  exiled  from  the  kingdom  of  Saxony.  He  discussed  the 
war  from  many  points  of  view — racially  as  the  effort  of  a 
growing  nation  to  secure  adequate  land  and  food  for  its  mem- 
bers, economically  as  a  new  Punic  struggle  for  markets  and 
politically  as  the  last  throw  of  a  bankrupt  landed  class  to  win 
back  the  power  it  had  gradually  lost  to  the  encroaching 
democracy. 


472  SONIA 

We  talked  of  the  war's  duration  and  the  probable  form 
of  its  end,  of  the  redistribution  of  Europe  and  the  guarantees 
of  a  lasting  peace.  Then  O'Rane  handed  round  cigars  and 
offered  Burgess  the  better  of  the  arm-chairs. 

"I  have  been  asked  to  write  a  sketch  of  the  last  twenty 
years,"  I  said,  "for  a  boy  who's  been  born  into  the  new  world. 
Already  I  find  it  difficult  to  recollect  the  old.  The  future — 
the  'unborn  to-morrow' — what's  It  going  to  be,  sir?" 

"We  shall  be  dazed  and  bruised  before  an  end  is  made, 
laddie,  staggering  like  drunken  men.  Peradventure,  if  ye 
speak  of  the  Promised  Land,  men  will  arise  and  stone  you 
with  stones,  crying,  'Would  to  God  we  had  died  by  the  hand 
of  the  Lord  in  the  land  of  Egypt  when  we  sat  by  the  fleshpots 
and  when  we  did  eat  bread  to  the  full.'  I  am  an  old  man, 
laddie,  and  old  men  and  weary  men,  broken  with  the  cares  of 
this  life,  are  fain  to  go  back  to  the  things  they  know." 

O'Rane  had  seated  himself  on  the  floor,  with  his  hands 
clasped  in  characteristic  fashion  round  his  knees,  and  his 
head  thrown  back  and  resting  on  Sonia's  knees.  Burgess 
turned  to  him. 

"David  O'Rane  holds  his  peace,"  he  said. 

Raney  shook  his  head  despondently.  "Sometimes  I  see 
it  like  that,  sir,"  he  said.  "The  country  slipping  back  into 
its  old  ways — all  the  more  eagerly  for  its  moment  of  asceti- 
cism. I  see  the  old  politics  and  the  old  sport  and  the  old 
butterfly  society  of  London,  and  the  waste  and  the  cruelty. 
I  see  the  factions  going  back  to  their  interrupted  quarrel — 
capital  spending  its  thousand  on  a  ball  and  engineering  a 
lock-out  so  as  to  sell  off  its  bad  stocks  at  famine  prices ;  labour 
not  content  with  money  to  burn  on  league  championships  and 
picture  palaces,  striking  because  it  hasn't  had  a  share  in  the 
last  advance  of  profits.  Two-and-seventy  jarring  sects 
preaching  to  us  from  their  two-and-seventy  pulpits,  and  still 
men  rotten  with  disease,  still  children  without  enough  to  eat, 
still  women  walking  up  and  down  the  London  streets.  And 
then  I  wonder  if  it's  worth  winning  the  war." 

He  jumped  up  suddenly,  walked  to  his  writing-table  and 
began  rummaging  in  one  of  the  drawers. 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          473 

"Is  it  anything  I  can  do?"  Sonia  asked. 

"I've  found  it,  thanks."  He  handed  me  a  bundle  of  man- 
uscript and  resumed  his  place  at  Sonia's  feet. 

"It's  fairly  legible,"  he  said.  "I  typed  it,  but  of  course 
I  can't  check  my  typing.  D'you  remember  my  telling  you  in 
April  that  I  was  coming  down  here  to  think  ?  I've  been  think- 
ing on  paper,  and  you  have  the  result  there.  It  may  interest 
you  if  you  have  time  to  spare  on  it." 

"Is  it  for  an  old  man's  eye  also,  laddie?"  Burgess  asked. 

"Of  course,  sir.  I'm  afraid  you  won't  find  anything  very 
new  or  profound.  I've  shirked  the  hard  parts  and  quietly 
assumed  anything  I  couldn't  prove.  I  assume  we're  going  to 
win,  I  assume  our  Statesmen  can  exact  material  peace  guar- 
antees that  can't  be  broken  when  anyone  chooses.  I  assume 
we  shall  move  gradually  towards  greater  international  spirit 
and  become  more  peaceful  as  political  power  spreads  down- 
wards. We  were  getting  there,  you  know, — George,  you  know 
it  better  than  anyone, — approaching  the  time  when  the  steve- 
dores of  Hamburg  would  see  no  profit  in  bayoneting  the 
stevedores  of  Liverpool.  My  first  chapter  is  a  tissue  of 
assumptions." 

"It's  going  to  be  a  book,  then?" 

"Perhaps.  The  second  chapter  deals  minutely  with  Eng- 
land before  the  war — an  England  moving  rapidly  towards 
social  revolution,  as  I  always  maintained — sectionized,  un- 
disciplined, unco-ordinated,  indifferent,  soulless.  I've  tried 
to  point  out  the  dangers.  Are  we  going  back  to  an  Irish 
question,  and  a  Suffrage  question,  and  a  General  Strike? 
I've  tried  to  solve  a  good  many  problems — old  ones  and  new, 
wages  and  the  relations  of  women  and  labour  since  the  war; 
birthrate  and  marriage.  We  shall  have  them  before  us  in 
the  House,  and  I  want  to  be  ready.  That's  all  the  difficult 
part  of  the  work — the  part  other  people  find  so  easy.  Then 
we  get  to  the  really  easy  part,  the  thing  we  can  easily  do,  the 
moral  revolution,  the  attempt  to  make  the  world  worth  living 
in.  George  knows  my  criterion." 
"Can  you  get  it  accepted?"  I  asked. 
He  sprang  to  his  feet  and  faced  us  with  arms  outstretched. 


474  SONIA 

"With  a  war  like  this  searing  each  man's  brain  and  deso- 
lating each  man's  house?  A  generation  has  gone  to  war,  and 
two-thirds  of  its  manhood  will  never  return.  A  third  may 
come  back,  and  when  peace  dawns  it  will  light  up  an  England 
of  old  men,  women  and  boys.  The  returning  troops  who  have 
looked  death  in  the  eyes  and  been  spared — were  they  spared 
for  nothing?  Destiny,  Providence,  God,  Luck — even  .  .  . 
You  may  choose  your  name.  If  they  come  back  when  others 
as  good  or  better  are  blown  or  tortured  to  death,  do  you  suppose 
their  escape  hasn't  bred  in  them  a  soul?  For  a  day  and  a 
night  they  have  lived  the  Grand  Life;  will  they  slip  back? 
If  they'll  die  for  their  country,  won't  they  live  for  it?  Can't 
you  dream  of  a  New  Birth  .  .  .  ?" 

His  hands  dropped  to  his  sides,  and  a  spasm  of  pain  was 
reflected  in  his  eyes  like  a  wave  of  light. 

"And  those  who  remained  behind,"  he  went  on,  "the  sick, 
the  women,  the  old  men,  the  boys.  It  has  cost  heroic  blood 
to  keep  them  alive.  They  can  no  longer  map  out  existence 
for  their  amusement,  they  are  in  debt  for  their  lives.  And 
the  payment  of  that  debt  ..." 

He  covered  his  eyes  and  stood  silent  for  a  while,  swaying. 
"I  can  still  see  visions,  thank  God,"  he  murmured.  "This 
war's  been  going  on  for  a  year — a  year  to-day,  and  a  year  ago 
I  said  it  would  demand  of  each  one  of  us  whatever  we  held 
most  dear.  Then  I  looked  on  it  all  as  a  struggle  for  bodily 
existence,  but  now — unless  Death  seen  so  near  and  by  such 
young  eyes  is  going  to  destroy  all  regard  for  the  sanctity  of 
life — now  we  seem  to  have  a  chance  of  winning  our  souls 
back.  .  .  .  When  I  was  a  child  in  Prague  my  father  took  me 
to  see  a  picture  of  Rome  in  the  second  century — a  street  scene 
with  patricians  in  their  bordered  togas  swinging  along  in 
litters,  and  slaves  running  on  ahead,  and  priests  and  eunuchs 
elbowing  each  other  out  of  the  way,  and  a  popular  gladiator 
being  recognized  and  cheered.  There's  a  blaze  of  sunlight, 
and  you  can  almost  hear  the  thunder  of  victorious  material 
prosperity.  Noise  of  jostling  humanity  and  the  polyglot  shouts 
of  an  Empire's  citizens  in  the  capital  of  the  world.  And  at 
a  street-corner  stands  an  elderly  man,  poorly  dressed,  speak 


WATCHERS  FOR  THE  DAWN          475 

ing,  I  suppose,  not  the  purest  Latin  to  a  half-circle  of  loafers. 
There  is  nothing  noteworthy  about  him,  save  perhaps  his 
eyes  and,  I  imagine,  the  sincerity  of  his  voice  as  he  tells  his 
tale  for  the  thousandth  time,  'Sirs,  I  saw  him  with  these  eyes 
— my  Master,  whom  I  had  denied ;  and  they  judged  Him  .  .  . 
and  nailed  Him  to  a  cross  .  .  .  and  He  died.  ..." 

There  was  a  deep  silence  as  O'Rane  paused.  "I — all  of 
us  who  were  out  there — have  seen  it.  We  can't  forget.  The 
courage,  the  cold,  heart-breaking  courage  .  .  .  and  the  smile 
on  a  dying  man's  face.  .  .  .  We  must  never  let  it  be  forgotten ; 
we've  earned  the  right.  As  long  as  a  drunkard  kicks  his  wife, 
or  a  child  goes  hungry,  or  a  woman  is  driven  through  shame 
to  disease  and  death.  .  .  .  Is  it  a  great  thing  to  ask?  To 
demand  of  England  to  remember  that  the  criminals  and 
loafers  and  prostitutes  are  somebody's  children,  mothers  and 
sisters?  And  that  we've  all  been  saved  by  a  miracle  of  suffer- 
ing? Is  that  too  great  a  strain  on  our  chivalry?  I'll  go  out  if 
need  be,  but — but  must  we  stand  at  street-corners  to  tell  what 
we  have  seen?  To  ask  the  bystanders — and  ourselves — • 
whether  we  went  to  war  to  preserve  the  right  of  inflicting 
pain?" 

THE  END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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